BEIJING - The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), China's foreign exchange regulator, said Wednesday that 16 banks have been found to have committed irregularities in their foreign exchange transactions since October.

The regulator has handed out penalties to these banks, involving 79 of their branches, including fines, suspension of some foreign exchange business and punishment of some senior managers, the regulator said in a statement posted on its website.

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Further, SAFE released a list of cases involving companies and individuals who failed to comply with the nation's foreign exchange rules, including some branches of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and China Construction Bank.

This is the latest move by the government to stem hot money inflows. China launched a crackdown on speculative and arbitrage capital from overseas beginning in February to safeguard the country's economic and financial stability.

An investigation that began in February covered 197 cases of hot money inflows involving $7.34 billion.

The SAFE launched a second crackdown on speculative capital in October, inspecting the headquarters of three commercial banks, branches of 33 Chinese lenders and nine foreign-invested banks.

Officials from the regulator said they would step up regulation of the foreign exchange business and continue to crackdown on hot money to promote the healthy development of China's financial sector.