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Prosecutors to move into Mega Bank

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Prosecutors to move into Mega Bank

Prosecutors to move into Mega Bank

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Prosecutors were planning to move into the Mega International Commercial Bank to speed up the investigation into alleged money laundering, reports said Friday.
New York State’s Department of Financial Service (DFS) fined the Taiwanese bank’s New York branch US$180 million (NT$5.7 billion) for a number of allegedly suspicious transactions with another branch in Panama.
The move by prosecutors reported Friday would allow the investigators to look up relevant documents quickly and to find bank managers to question within a short time, reports said.
The Taipei District Prosecutors Office (TDPO), which has been put in charge of the probe, has already questioned former Mega Holdings Chairman McKinney Tsai, who was listed as a defendant, and his successor, Hsu Kuang-hsi.
Because so many bank officials needed to be interviewed, the traditional method of sending summons to invite them to a questioning session would take too much time, prosecutors said.
Therefore, the TDPO had decided to form a taskforce with two senior and two regular prosecutors who would be based at the bank. They would be authorized to immediately question relevant people, request to consult documents, compare witness statements and prevent the possibility of relevant individuals colluding or destroying evidence while reduce the amount of official documents needed during the investigation process.
Of the six Mega Bank officials already questioned, only Tsai had been named as a defendant and barred from leaving the country.
Panama has also announced it will open an investigation into Mega Bank’s branch in that country after links were uncovered that might indicate the Taiwanese bank had been involved in money laundering and tax evasion, reports said.