Prosecutors yesterday closed a case in which Mega International Commercial Bank was suspected of violating the Money Laundering Control Act (洗錢防制法), citing a lack of evidence.
After nine months of investigation, no evidence was found to indicate that the bank had facilitated money laundering, they said.
The investigation was launched after the New York Department of Financial Services in August last year imposed a US$180 million fine on Mega Bank after identifying “a number of suspicious transactions” between its New York and Panama branches.
Mega Bank was accused of not complying with the US Bank Secrecy Act, which is also known as the law against money laundering, when it failed to report suspicious transactions made by its clients.
Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office spokesman Chang Chieh-chin (張介欽) said that Mega Bank was fined mainly because its New York branch failed to report 110 debit authorizations received from the branch in Panama in 2012.
Prosecutors found that the violation was mainly due to the branch’s lack of understanding of US law against money laundering.
As part of the investigation, prosecutors checked 17,033 remittance transactions between the bank’s New York and Panama branches, but did not discover any acts of money laundering, Chang said.
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