Officials from Executive Yuan agencies, the Ministry of Justice and other ministries yesterday released this year’s report on Taiwan’s efforts to combat money laundering and terrorism financing.
Forty-seven government departments and regulatory agencies, and 27 private-sector organizations, mainly in the financial services sector, were involved in compiling data for the 2021 National Money Laundering, TF (Terrorism Financing), PF (Proliferation Financing) Risk Assessment Report, in compliance with Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) regulations.
Minister of Justice Tsai Ching-hsiang (蔡清祥) endorsed the findings in the report, which is the second of its kind after the first was published in 2018.
Photo: Yang Kuo-wen, Taipei Times
The huge effort began in March, led by the Executive Yuan’s Anti-Money Laundering Office.
“There were interim evaluations by AGP in past years, in which Taiwan received one of the top ratings in Asia for stemming international money laundering and terrorism financing,” Tsai said. “In the latest APG evaluation this year, Taiwan again finished in the top group in Asia.”
He said that this year’s report, for the first time, looked into the online gambling sector, which has become more popular in recent years, while the other new threats were found in e-gaming and the virtual asset sector — as in cryptocurrencies and virtual currency exchanges.
Other new inclusions were the art auction market, automobile sales and trading, and pawn shops, he said.
Anti-Money Laundering Office Executive Secretary Su Pei-yu (蘇佩鈺) presented the report’s main points.
She said that Taiwan is most vulnerable to 10 forms of criminal activities, with drug trafficking, financial fraud, smuggling, tax evasion and organized crime at the top of the list.
The other five were stock market manipulation or insider trading, unregulated money transfers, illegal online gambling, corruption and bribe-taking by government officials, and infringements on intellectual property rights, Su said.
She said that those at “very high risk” of being targeted by criminal groups for money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing included domestic banks, offshore banking units and the virtual asset sector.
International stock market and securities businesses with offices based in Taiwan, e-gaming companies, foreign banks with branch offices in Taiwan, post offices, domestic securities companies and, accounting firms were rated as “high risk,” she said.
Others rated as “high risk” include gold and jewelry dealers, legal offices, real-estate companies, insurance firms, third-party payment services and agricultural cooperatives that provide financing and loans, as well as the securities investment and trust consulting sector, she said.
Financial Supervisory Commission Vice Chairperson Hsiao Tsuey-ling (蕭翠玲) said the report would provide useful data for Taiwan’s financial services sector.
“Taiwan’s banks, securities investment and financial service firms, and insurance companies ... can make their own evaluations and monitor those transactions and activities with a high risk of money laundering, or other illegal financing,” Hsiao said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching