China's financial regulators retrieved 1.26 billion yuan of proceeds from financial crime at its banks in the first seven months.

The money accounted for 40 percent of the proceeds of all cases of irregularities uncovered in the period, said the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) on Tuesday.

Investigators retrieved 1.47 billion yuan, or 27.9 percent of the total,last year.

The commission said 69 percent of the cases in the first seven months were revealed during internal supervision, compared with 65.5 percent last year.

The CBRC found 480 cases of irregularities in the first half of this year, 89 fewer than the same period of last year, but no figures for the first seven months are provided.

The agency had referred 1,997 Chinese bank officers accused of serious crimes to prosecuting authorities since launching a crackdown in February last year, and 658 had been convicted.

Liu Mingkang, CBRC director, said the priority of the crackdown for the rest of the year would be to prevent irregular accounting and to reduce irregularities in institutions with poor records.

The government was tightening supervision and had initiated reform in the banking sector to prepare for full opening up of the industry at the end of this year. (1 U.S. dollar= 7.96 yuan)