The High Court on Thursday overturned another conviction of former Mega Financial Holding Co chairman Mckinney Tsai (蔡友才), who has been embroiled in a series of legal battles since the company’s banking unit was fined for compliance issues in the US in 2016.
Tsai and his codefendant, Wang Chi-pang (王起梆), a former chief secretary at Mega Financial, were found guilty of forgery related to fake documents submitted to the New York State Department of Financial Services in its investigation into Mega International Commercial Bank’s branch in New York in 2016.
The bank was fined US$180 million in August 2016 for “serious deficiencies” in its “compliance program,” which US regulators described as a “flagrant disregard of anti-money laundering laws.”
Photo: Yang Kuo-wen, Taipei Times
Tsai resigned in March 2016, but the fine issued by US regulators led to several investigations, including one by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, into his work at Mega Financial in Taiwan.
In December 2016, Taipei prosecutors indicted Tsai and Wang for alleged forgery, money laundering, insider trading and breach of trust in an investigation into questionable companies they had set up.
In November 2020, the Taipei District Court acquitted Tsai and Wang of money laundering, insider trading and breach of trust, but convicted them of forgery, based on documents they had submitted to US regulators, claiming they were minutes of a board meeting of one of the companies they had established.
On Thursday, judges at the High Court quashed Tsai’s conviction, citing a lack of evidence to support the argument that he knew the documents had been forged. Wang’s three-month jail term was cut to two months.
The High Court also upheld the lower court’s acquittal on other charges, rejecting the appeal filed by prosecutors. All of the rulings on Thursday can be appealed.
In the series of criminal and civil legal proceedings, along with regulatory decisions, Tsai has come out mostly unscathed.
In December last year, following Tsai’s appeal, the High Court overturned his conviction and six-month prison sentence for allegedly taking kickbacks from a company that secured loans from Mega International Commercial Bank in October 2023.
The Financial Supervisory Commission’s decision to remove Tsai from the Mega Financial board in September 2016 was thrown out by the Supreme Administrative Court in November 2019, which said that the financial regulator’s decision, targeting Tsai only, would have little impact on Mega Financial.
However, in November 2022, the High Court ordered Tsai to pay damages of NT$50 million (US$1.63 million) in a civil case filed by Mega International Commercial Bank to recover the fines it had paid to US regulators. The case had earlier been rejected by the Taipei District Court.
Tsai and the bank appealed the High Court ruling, and the Supreme Court in July 2023 ordered the High Court to hold a retrial.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS