The Economic Democracy Union yesterday called for an investigation into reports of alleged bogus transactions and money laundering by e-commerce platform Shopee that has led to accusations it helped China channel funds into Taiwan to support pro-China political parties and politicians.
There are many accusations that Shopee and its partners have allowed Chinese state-directed operations to meddle in Taiwanese politics in the run-up to next year’s presidential election, Economic Democracy Union researcher Lo Tzu-wei (羅子維) told a news conference.
The Ministry of Digital Affairs and the Ministry of Justice should crack down on illegal activities, and monitor “unusual product sales and bogus transactions” and “concealed money flows” detected on Shopee’s Web site, Lo said.
Photo: Reuters
“Prosecutors have uncovered money laundering and illegal transmittance between Shopee sellers and buyers,” he said. “This is probably how China channels funds into Taiwan to make illegal political donations.”
The money from China and other overseas sources has financed pro-China parties and their candidates, funded vote-buying operations, paid for adverts and campaign worker wages, and been used to buy media firms and hire Internet celebrities to generate disinformation to undermine the government, he said.
In one case, a couple in Taiwan set up a shop to sell products and “conduct workshops to teach about online payments and stored value services,” but investigators discovered that they were remitting money between Taiwan and China illegally via yuan deposits to accounts at Chinese state banks, Lo said.
Prosecutors indicted the couple for contraventions of the Banking Act (銀行法) and the Money Laundering Control Act (洗錢防制法), while people filed complaints about the couple selling fake luxury-brand bags, Lo said.
He and other researchers this week found 2,900 criminal investigations and cases involving Shopee in a search on the Judicial Yuan database, Lo said.
The Shilin District Court last year ruled against the firm in a criminal trial, he said.
“It was just one case, but it shows that criminals have Shopee accounts that they use to remit money from fraud operations,” he said. “Shopee has become a favorite platforms for fraudsters and scammers.”
Shopee Taiwan Co is a subsidiary of Singapore-based Sea Ltd, founded by Singaporean businessman Forrest Li (李小冬).
Shopee Taiwan is backed by Chinese capital, with China’s tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd holding a 39.7 percent stake when the Taiwan subsidiary was registered in 2015, although it reduced its stake to 18.7 percent last year, Lo said.
Economic Democracy Union researcher Ou Hsu-shao (歐栩韶) said that Shopee’s operations are based on the “customer-to-customer” model, which enables account-holders to set up “unusual product sales and bogus transactions.”
Investigations have uncovered numerous illegal activities, including money laundering, illicit remittance, illegal third-party payment services, false pricing to facilitate tax evasion and yuan-denominated transactions, Ou said.
Shopee Taiwan in a statement said that it strictly forbids illegal transactions and currency exchanges.
It has reported illegal online sales that have breached financial regulations and it is cooperating with authorities to clamp down on other illegal activity, it said.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
Taiwan is doing everything it can to prevent a military conflict with China, including building up asymmetric defense capabilities and fortifying public resilience, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said in a recent interview. “Everything we are doing is to prevent a conflict from happening, whether it is 2027 or before that or beyond that,” Hsiao told American podcaster Shawn Ryan of the Shawn Ryan Show. She was referring to a timeline cited by several US military and intelligence officials, who said Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to be ready to take military action against Taiwan
RSS