A large Chinese online lending platform accused of illegal operations has suspended operations, one of hundreds that have been shut this year by the government, as China cleans up a sector ridden with stories of Ponzi schemes.

Police in Huizhou, South China's Guangdong Province, said on Wednesday night that they had detained 13 executives from Guangdong Huirong Investment Co's peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform esudai.com.

Esudai is accused by the local police of illegally collecting deposits, while executives are accused of taking hundreds of millions of yuan in investor money for their own use.

Esudai has raised over 7 billion yuan ($1.07 billion) from 330,000 investors since it was founded in 2010, according to its website.