Zou Qing, chairman of Huayuanda and two lawyers, Kong Weidong and Zhan Jun will also stand trial.

Zou, a Hong Kong businessman, was charged with accepting fraudulent loans.

Kong, from the Beijing Jiahui Law Firm and Zhan, from the Beijing Huayi Law Firm, were accused of providing fake documents to the bank, which were then used to apply for the mortgage loans.

Kong allegedly provided fake documents for a 600 million yuan (US$73 million) loan and Zhan was said to be involved with supplying fake documents worth more than 30 million yuan (US$3.6 million), the report said.

The Senhao apartment project, which suspended construction in 2002, left an uncompleted building in Beijing's Chaoyangmen area near the Second Ring Road.

The fraud case was discovered during an audit conducted by the National Audit Office in 2004.

Xu was removed from office in 2002 when the BOC realized the huge risks involved in the project. He was then fired after the fraud was discovered.

The Bank of China has been hit by a number of high-profile scandals in recent years.

One involved the former head and deputy head of a bank sub-branch in the northeast province of Heilongjiang who embezzled 914.6 million yuan (113 million dollars) worth of bank bills over three years.

In another case, Yu Zhendong, former head of the Kaiping branch of Bank of China in Guangdong Province was sentenced to 12 years in prison for embezzling US$ 82.5 million in public funds after being repatriated from the United States.

Also among those snared in the bank's history of corruption were the former head of its Hong Kong branch, Liu Jinbao, who was handed a suspended death sentence in August last year for embezzlement and bribery.

Zhao Ange, a former bank vice president, was jailed for life in July 2004 for accepting 5.79 million yuan in bribes and former president Wang Xuebing was sentenced to 12 years in December 2003 for taking 1.15 million yuan in bribes.