Parties stick to their guns on issue of board makeup

Following three days of negotiations by the Legislative Yuan's finance committee, progress on the draft financial supervisory board (FSB) organization law (金監會組織法) remained deadlocked yesterday over the makeup of the nine-member board.

The draft will be sent to Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) today for final negotiations before a vote in the general assembly.

There was little cooperation, with the largest political parties each clinging to a different proposal for the board's makeup. The DPP caucus insisted that all nine members of the committee should be nominated by the premier and approved by the president.

However, opposition parties argued that four to six members of the committee should be chosen by the four largest political parties.

The KMT stuck to its stance that four committee members should be nominated by the four largest parties.

In addition, PFP legislative caucus convener Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) proposed yesterday that six of the nine members, other than the chairman and two officials from Ministry of Finance and Central Bank, should be recommended by the four largest parties.

The three proposals will all be sent to Wang for further negotiations and pushed through to a general meeting for a vote if no compromise is reached.

All 35 articles of the draft law were passed by the finance committee on Wednesday except for Article 9, which details the committee's makeup.

According to the final draft passed yesterday by the legislature's finance committee, the most powerful arm within the FSB will be the nine-member committee, which will be the final decision-making body.

In order to make the committee independent from political interference, the draft stipulates that no political party can control more than one-half, or five seats, in the nine-member committee. In addition, no commissioner may take part in any party campaigns or political activity during his or her term serving in the committee.

The draft also requires transparency for FSB operations. Any important punitive measure against a financial institution will have to be disclosed promptly once it becomes available, according to the draft.

Anyone who serves on the FSB committee or works for the FSB as staff must also avoid participating in investigations or other administrative actions by the FSB against financial institutions when his or her close relatives are acting as directors or managers in such financial institutions.

The total number of staff for FSB outlined by the draft is set between 900 to 1,200.

The new agency will be given investigative powers separate from the Bureau of Investigation under the Ministry of Justice.

The FSB will have the power to investigate any institution or person alleged of violating laws and regulations governed by the FSB. Should anyone refuse to provide documents or submit to interrogation, the penalty will be a fine of between NT$50,000 to NT$250,000 per subpoena until the required documents or interrogation is provided. Until now, no agency in supervising the financial markets has been given such strong investigative powers.

Funds for the FSB will come from the government's budget and fees charged from financial services sector. Those funds will be placed in a yet-to-be-established financial supervisory management fund. The rate for the annual fee is set between 0.03 percent to 0.08 percent of the annual revenues of each financial institution. The exact rate on annual fees will be determined by the FSB, according to the draft.