Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission announced an administrative fine of NT$22 million on Bank of Taiwan on 11 March 2025. The action follows a regulatory investigation into serious internal control failures that allowed two former bank employees to participate in improper fund transactions with customers and to conduct transactions on behalf of customers, between April 2021 and July 2024, a span of more than three years. The FSC also found that an employee involved had repeatedly remitted funds from accounts at the bank to offshore virtual currency platforms between 2016 and 2024.
The FSC cited violations of Banking Act Article 45-1 and the Internal Control Implementation Rules. The corporate account at the centre of the case was flagged seven times by Taiwan's joint defence notification system between 2023 and 2024 — a mechanism designed to share intelligence about suspicious accounts across participating financial institutions. Despite this volume of alerts, Bank of Taiwan failed to conduct the required reviews after the first two notifications had returned no finding of illegal activity.
MULTIPLE ALERTS WENT UNANSWERED
Bank of Taiwan's failure to re-engage the compliance process after the first two alerts found no wrongdoing meant that the five subsequent notifications received no review at all.
The two former employees at the centre of the case engaged in what the FSC characterised as improper fund transactions with customers and conducted transactions on behalf of customers, while remitting funds to offshore virtual currency platforms.
FSC SINGLES OUT STATE-BANK COMPLIANCE OBLIGATIONS
In its announcement, the regulator noted that Bank of Taiwan, as a 100% government-owned bank, should have led by example in fulfilling financial institutions' anti-fraud responsibilities. The FSC also stated that if financial institutions' staff are again found colluding with fraud rings, it will hold senior managers accountable under the accountability-map regime and impose heavier fines.