The maximum reward for people who report financial crimes would be raised to NT$4 million (US$140,701) next week, a 10-fold increase to encourage whistle-blowers, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) told a news conference in New Taipei City yesterday.
The maximum reward would be given to people who provide information that helps the commission uncover financial crimes in which companies or individuals are fined at least NT$10 million or sentenced to a minimum of three years in prison, FSC officials said.
The cap of NT$400,000 was increased in line with the commission’s goal of providing greater incentives for reporting, Financial Examination Bureau Deputy Director-General Chang Tzy-hao (張子浩) said.
Photo: Kao Shih-ching, Taipei Times
If a whistle-blower exposes a less-serious crime — where individuals or companies are fined between NT$5 million and NT$10 million, or sentenced to one year to three years in prison, they would receive NT$2 million, also 10 times the current reward, Chang said.
Rewards of NT$250,000 would be given for information leading to fines of between NT$1 million and NT$5 million, or jail terms of less than one year, he said, adding that this level is five times higher.
For lower-level crimes drawing fine of between NT$200,000 and NT$1 million, whistle-blowers would receive NT$50,000, also five times higher than the current amount, he said.
The commission last year issued a total of NT$305,000 in rewards to seven whistle-blowers, up from NT$50,000 in 2018 and NT$155,000 in 2019, it said.
It has paid NT$2.32 million in rewards since the program began, the FSC said.
The biggest single-case reward was NT$200,000, it said.
“There is a lot of room for increases in reporting on financial criminal activities,” Chang said.
Whistle-blowers can be internal or external to a company or institution, he said.
The commission would investigate information provided by anonymous whistle-blowers, but would not issue rewards in such cases, he said.
“A few anonymous whistle-blowers claimed rewards after reporting companies that were fined or sentenced. We verified their identity and paid them, as the information was helpful.” Chang said. “However, after next week’s increase in rewards, we would no longer pay out on anonymous tips.”
Most of the reports it has received in the past few years have been connected to illegal activities in securities investment consulting, he said.
SPEED OF LIGHT: US lawmakers urged the commerce department to examine the national security threats from China’s development of silicon photonics technology US President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday said it is finalizing rules that would limit US investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology sectors in China that could threaten US national security. The rules, which were proposed in June by the US Department of the Treasury, were directed by an executive order signed by Biden in August last year covering three key sectors: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies and certain AI systems. The rules are to take effect on Jan. 2 next year and would be overseen by the Treasury’s newly created Office of Global Transactions. The Treasury said the “narrow
SPECULATION: The central bank cut the loan-to-value ratio for mortgages on second homes by 10 percent and denied grace periods to prevent a real-estate bubble The central bank’s board members in September agreed to tighten lending terms to induce a soft landing in the housing market, although some raised doubts that they would achieve the intended effect, the meeting’s minutes released yesterday showed. The central bank on Sept. 18 introduced harsher loan restrictions for mortgages across Taiwan in the hope of curbing housing speculation and hoarding that could create a bubble and threaten the financial system’s stability. Toward the aim, it cut the loan-to-value ratio by 10 percent for second and subsequent home mortgages and denied grace periods for first mortgages if applicants already owned other residential
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip assembly and testing manufacturing (ATM) service provider, expects to double its leading-edge advanced technology services revenue next year to more than US$1 billion, benefiting from strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, a company executive said on Thursday. That would be the second year that ASE has doubled its advanced chip packaging and testing technology revenue, following an estimate of more than US$500 million for this year. ASE is one of the major beneficiaries from the AI boom as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is outsourcing production of advanced chip
RSS