A Taiwanese labor broker and his Indonesian wife have been indicted for allegedly running an underground Taiwan-Indonesia remittance service for more than a decade, handling more than NT$5.16 billion (US$163 million) in transfers and earning at least NT$26.66 million in fees.
The indicted broker, surnamed Chuang (莊), and his wife, surnamed Huang (黃), were charged with contravening Article 29 of the Banking Act (銀行法), the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement yesterday.
The article stipulates that non-banks are prohibited from "accepting deposits, managing trust funds or public property under entrustment or [handling] domestic or foreign remittances."
Photo: Chien Li-chung, Taipei Times
Chuang, the de facto head of three Taiwanese companies, is suspected of operating unauthorized money-transfer services from August 2013, the office said.
Chuang partnered with multiple Southeast Asian grocery stores in Taiwan that were unaware of the scheme to solicit customers who wanted to remit money to Indonesia, prosecutors said.
Customers either used a Web site set up by one of Chuang's companies or went to the grocery stores to fill out forms and hand over cash, prosecutors said, adding that the stores would then deposit the money into Taiwan bank accounts held by Chuang's companies.
After receiving the deposits, Huang would use online banking to transfer the equivalent amount in rupiah to recipients in Indonesia from her account at Bank Central Asia, a private Indonesian bank, prosecutors said.
From 2020, the operation switched to using an account opened under the name of one of Chuang's companies at Bank Rakyat Indonesia, they said.
Customers were charged a handling fee of NT$100 by the grocery stores for transfers that arrived in one to two days, while "express" transfers that arrived within one to two hours cost NT$150 to NT$300, the statement said.
The grocery stores, in turn, passed on most of the profits — NT$80 per regular transfer and NT$120 per express transfer — to Chuang's companies, it said.
Prosecutors also alleged that Chuang worked with an overseas Indonesian underground remittance operator surnamed Su (蘇), who recruited clients in Indonesia, Hong Kong and Malaysia seeking to send payments such as goods-related remittances to Taiwan.
It is estimated the couple handled about NT$5.16 billion in transfers between August 2013 and August last year, earning at least NT$26.66 million in fees, the statement said.
Chuang said that he was only helping migrant workers settle their wages and exchange foreign currency, but prosecutors said such services are limited to licensed labor brokers under specific conditions and operators are not permitted to run cross-border remittance businesses on their own.
Prosecutors asked the court to confiscate the couple's illegal gains of NT$26.66 million. Chuang and Huang also face a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to NT$10 million under the Banking Act.
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