A Maidenhead woman had her bank account frozen over money laundering concerns after she took £85,000 in cash to her local branch.

Millionaire entrepreneur Wei Chen took the wads of cash in batches of up to £4,000 at a time over the course of 33 days, a court heard.

She had been given the money by Taiwanese international businessman Chien-Hung Huang, who the court heard lives in a seven-bedroom home in Stanmore and has business interests in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the UK.

Chen moved to the UK from China on an entrepreneurs visa to further her business interests and has a background in business and finance.

She claimed the money from Huang was a loan which she intended to pay back with some of the £1.73million she had made from selling a house in China.

Speaking through a Mandarin translator, she told a judge she needed the loan urgently as she was unable to return to China in 2021 to retrieve the money from he sale of the house because of the country’s strict Covid restrictions.

Chen, of Court Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire, and her husband had “onerous” expenses which included £26,000 a year on rent and £24,000 a year on tuition for her two children, the court heard.

Detective Constable Nicholas Widdison, a financial investigator, told Reading Magistrates Court said there were “very strict” restrictions on how much money can be removed from China.

“Mrs Chen has circumvented, has gone around, the laws in China in order to have those funds in her possession in the UK”, Widdison said.

He said some of the proceeds from the sale of Chen’s property in China had not left the country but had gone into a Chinese bank account owned by a woman referred to as QC, Huang’s wife.  

This was “the very definition of Chinese underground banking service”, Widdison said. “The money stays in China and money from a different source is provided from the UK in recompense”.

But Widdison said Huang had been unable to provide credible evidence of where he had obtained the £85,000 in cash.

Huang claimed he had acted as the guardian for eight students who had paid him £8,000 each in cash which they had brought from China.

Police said they had contacted the schools which the children were said to attend for two of the children the schools were “unable to confirm” Huang was the guardian and for one of the children there was no record of them having attended the school at all.

Huang also said some of his money had come from the £18,370 sale of his Mercedes Benz, but police allege it was sold after the money was transferred to Chen.

Edward Barham, representing TVP, said Chen been “on notice” the loan money was the proceeds of crime.

Chen told the court she had met Huang when she first arrived in the UK in 2018, as he came to the airport to pick her family up. 

In April 2021, they met again at a family event and he agreed to help her financially after hearing she could not return to China.

Barham argued Chen and her husband had around £237,000 in their joint HSBC accounts, which would have covered their expenses and said none of the money in the Lloyds account had ever been used for any of their expenses.

He asked Chen why she had agreed to receive the money from Huang in cash rather than through a wire transfer or a direct payment to her Lloyds account.

Chen replied: “In my culture, I do not expect cash will cause me so much trouble.

“After I asked people who had lived in the UK for a long time, I realised my behaviour could cause some misunderstanding.”

John Fitzgerald, representing Chen, said a cultural expert witness had stated China has a culture “where cash is still king” and it is not unusual for people to have “large sums”, sometimes millions, in cash.

He added Chen had met Huang at his “chunk of a house” in Stanmore and that Hong Kong Inland Revenue documents showed he had an income of £2,200,000 Hong Kong dollars.

Police do not accuse Chen of having committed a crime and she has not been charged with any offence. Their case is that she should have known or could have discovered on making reasonable inquiries that the money was the proceeds of crime.

Huang did not attend court, but he denied the money was the proceeds of crime.

The case continues.