With a vision of documenting the nation’s criminal history and strengthening international cooperation, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office has published its first English-language book, which details the inside stories of the nation’s best-known financial crimes of the modern era.
The book, Top 10 Financial Fraud Investigation Records, published on Sept. 1, actually chronicles 12 of the biggest cases handled by Taipei prosecutors in the past 72 years.
It gives accounts of how these cases originated and how the judiciary eventually prevailed, detailing the plots and scams used to defraud billions of New Taiwan dollars by the most notorious swindlers and corporate con artists, and with corrupt business tycoons among its cast of real-life villains.
Many Taiwanese readers will recall the frauds covered in the main chapters, which include the Taipei Tenth Credit Cooperative financial scandal of 1985 and the Waterland Securities case in 1995, through to the First Commercial Bank ATM heist and the judicial probe into money laundering at Mega International Commercial Bank last year.
Taipei District Chief Prosecutor Hsing Tai-chao (邢泰釗) headed up the project to produce the book, while Prosecutor Chang An-chen (張安箴) was the main author responsible for the research, along with an editorial committee made up of fellow prosecutors and legal experts.
The project was born during an exchange trip Hsing made to the US, when the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office presented him with a book detailing its more than 100-year history, a chronicle of all its major prosecution cases.
“I thought that was a great idea. It allowed outsiders to gain a quick understanding of the attorney office’s history and its contribution to the US justice system,” Hsing said in an interview with the Taipei Times.
It prompted Hsing to push for a similar history of the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office’s major financial crimes and their prosecution.
“We wanted to publish it in English because we wanted to let the world know about our rigorous teamwork and conscientious work ethic, and to pass on our experiences to others,” he said.
Chang was uniquely qualified to undertake the task because she has very good English-language ability, having obtained two advanced law degrees from Pennsylvania State University, the office said.
Chang said that she began work on the project in August last year, going through the archives to select the most prominent cases involving more than NT$5 billion (US$165.15 million at the current exchange rate) which had special aspects and had made an impact on Taiwanese society.
“Eventually, it was pared down to 12 major cases,” Chang said. “I went through the archive of case files and documentation to gather all the available information and I also personally visited each prosecutor in charge of the 12 cases to talk about their experiences.”
“All of them still have sharp minds and clear memories of the details of the cases, so they supplemented the material and clarified the details of each case,” she said.
It was important to consider the content from a foreign reader’s viewpoint and to make it interesting, rather than just translating the court statements, Chang said.
Each chapter begins with the socioeconomic conditions at the time of the case, then discusses how the crime was uncovered, the judicial investigation and the trial proceedings.
The book then details how each case affected Taiwanese society and its comparison with similar crimes in Western nations, she said.
The research was an arduous process that took much time and energy, Chang said.
“I still had to carry out my daily duties as a prosecutor, so I had to use my spare time away from work,” she said. “It was very difficult at times, since I have a family and I had to take care of my children. It was only when I put my children to bed that I could sit down to write up the chapters, from late at night until the early hours of the morning.”
As the first book published in English to document the nation’s judiciary history and major court cases, government ministries have presented it to visiting foreign dignitaries and have received very positive responses, Hsing said.
He said the chapter on the First Commercial Bank ATM heist was first released as a separate case study paper and it received highly favorable reviews from the International Association of Prosecutors and the judiciaries of many nations.
It was also published in the newsletter Global Prosecutors E-Crime Network earlier this year, he said.
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