In March 2000, the Taiwanese electorate voted Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) into the Presidential Office with the hope of toppling the "black gold" KMT regime, prosecuting the perpetrators of financial crimes and eliminating gangsters so that Taiwan could avoid following the path of South Korea and Thailand into bankruptcy.
Now that the DPP has been in power for two years, the people are apparently satisfied with the government's crackdown on gangsters. However, investigations into financial crimes aren't making much progress. Many conglomerate heads who have violated the law are still not behind bars and some continue to try to funnel capital abroad.
According to international media reports, four of the 10 biggest bankruptcy cases in the US in two decades occurred this year -- WorldCom (US$107 billion), Global Crossing (US$25.5 billion), Adelphia Communications (US$24.4 billion) and Kmart (US$17 billion). These bankruptcy cases shocked international financial circles and are the result of lax controls on the part of US financial authorities and the judiciary.
In recent years, we've seen a massive embezzlement scandal at the Kuangsan Group (
The central government took over the bank last year and is now looking for a buyer. But the bank's massive bad loans remain the biggest obstacle in talks between the government and potential foreign buyers. A majority of those bad loans will be written off with tax-payer money.
One of the biggest problems is the lack of knowledge among Taiwan's judges about financial crimes. In the past, the judges' training lopsidedly emphasized traditional criminal matters and general civil law. They received inadequate training for handling financial crimes. They often have to rely on professional accountants to review their cases. This often leads to inaccuracy in the investigations, as well as information leaks, poor timing and slow progress.
Taiwan has a highly developed financial industry. A large variety of complex financial transactions take place daily. Without a highly efficient judiciary working with the government's financial authorities to deter financial crimes, commercial transactions, which often run as high as billions of NT dollars, naturally become a hotbed for crime. In the past, the KMT government turned a blind eye to illegal loans at local financial institutions such as farmers' and fishermen's associations, causing bad loan ratios to rise annually. This shows that more emphasis must be placed on the financial knowledge and training of Taiwan's judges.
At a time when Taiwan needs more than ever to work on its economy, we cannot allow some commercial swindlers to draw big pies on the wall to mislead Taiwan's investors and achieve their goal of boosting their share prices. A couple of years ago, Taiwan followed the global dotcom bubble only to see dotcom share prices take a nose dive last year. After that, some front companies started playing up shares in Taiwan's electronics industry. Today, the share prices of those companies have also burst. The victims, obviously, are the small-time Taiwanese investors. An over-the-hill Taiwanese politician has even openly raised funds in Taiwan for investment in China. The Taiwanese judiciary has failed to stop him in advance.
The judiciary should take early action against those companies or individuals engaging in financial fraud in Taiwan so that the damage may not expand to a calamitous scale. Both the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and this year's US bankruptcy cases should remind Taiwan's judiciary to work harder so that it can remain vigilant against financial crimes.
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