A female worker sorts through chunks of coal in Jiexiu, North China's Shanxi Province. Photo: CFP

A screen capture from meitanbank.com

The website of the new China Coal Bank has been hacked by Japanese financial companies and their Chinese partners, JinBen Investment Group Co, one of the founders of the bank, claimed in a statement on Sunday.

Meitanbank.com has been hacked since Friday, with the hacker leaving a number of messages, including, "the China Coal Bank has offended many people." Another message claimed that JinBen "colluded with financial institutions to drive up share prices in the coal and nonferrous metal sector in the mainland stock market on Friday, leading to losses of several hundred million yuan for our financial groups."

"We've found that our website has been attacked by a large number of IP addresses based in Japan," Wang Wen­yuan, a Guangzhou-based spokesman for JinBen, told the Global Times on Sunday.

The firm also said two of its staff members were attacked by strangers on Thursday, and wiretaps have been found in the company's office.

Wang said the company will not call in the police, but will take action on its own, without offering further details. In the statement, the company said it might take advice from hacker group Honker Union of China.

JinBen officially launched meitanbank.com on October 27. According to information posted on the website, 15 coal firms including Shanxi Coal International Energy Group and Jincheng Anthracite Group participated in establishing the bank, which will become the country's largest private bank. For now, it is still waiting for approval from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC).

The bank, which will be China's first coal bank, is to be established in North China's Shanxi Province, a major coal producer, and currently a batch of local coal firms have reached preliminary cooperation agreements with JinBen, according to a statement posted on the provincial government's official website on October 30. However, this piece of information cannot be found on the website now.

Several coal firms, including Jincheng Anthracite Group, Yangquan Coal Industry (Group) Co and Shanxi Coking Coal Group Co, have released statements in the past two weeks, denying their participation in the establishment of China Coal Bank. And so far, the CBRC has not made any comment on the launch of the bank.

Meanwhile, doubts about JinBen's credibility have also emerged recently. Shenzhen-listed Jiangsu Sihuan Bioengineering Co warned investors in a statement published on September 18 that there is a lot of false information on kvp8.com, which currently serves as the official website of JinBen.

But Wang from JinBen claimed that the false information was posted before JinBen bought the website from another company, according to a report published Wednesday by news portal netease.com.

The hacking incident has had a negative influence on the establishment of the China Coal Bank, JinBen's statement said, noting that JinBen will adjust its strategy and only provide consulting services. The netease.com report had quoted Wang as saying that JinBen aimed to become a shareholder in the bank.

"The launch of the coal bank is good news for coal firms, which can lower their financing costs and increase profit margins by stepping into the banking sector. But it will hurt the interests of commercial banks," Li Chaolin, a researcher at the China Coal Transportation & Sale Society, told the Global Times on Sunday.

The establishment of the coal bank has also met opposition from some environmental protection groups.

"The launch of the coal bank goes against China's efforts to reduce carbon emissions and tackle pollution, because it will increase coal firms' financing ability and encourage their expansion," Greenovation Hub, an environmental NGO, said Friday.