Two Chinese men have been jailed after buying imported coins that were due to be recycled, cleaning them up, and selling them back to the country of origin.

Liang Enmei, an antique dealer, was sentenced to six years in jail, along with brother-in-law Wang Chuwei, 57, who was given a two year jail term.

The pair were found guilty of buying and selling ten tons of foreign currency, valued at more than £700,000.

Damaged coins are routinely taken out of circulation and are supposed to be shredded before being handed over to scrap metal dealers.

But these coins were sold whole to China where, instead of being melted down, they were cleaned up and sold back to the country of origin for a vast profit.

Liang, an antique dealer from Shanghai, employed brother-in-law Wang, a scrap metal dealer, to clean the coins over a ten month period in his workshop.

Chinese officials have refused to say which countries the coins were taken from.

To read the complete article, see:Chinese brothers-in-law jailed for total of eight years for buying 10 TONS of scrap coins and cleaning them before selling them back to country of origin(www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2652881/Chinese-brothers-law-jailed-total-eight-years-buying-10-TONS-scrap-coins-cleaning-selling-country-origin.html)