Seminar Records | Whether Our Country's Money Laundering Control Act Should Add the Offense of Delivering Mule Accounts | Debate Tournament & Seminar

Seminar Records

Following the debate tournament, the event moved into the second half: the seminar. The moderator noted that while issues arising from the delivery of mule accounts had been discussed in the past, it was regrettable that solutions were rarely explored. Today, by using the tool of policy debate to focus on discussions of solutions, it is hoped that the seminar will continue to move forward in this direction.

Section Chief Fu-Chi Kuo is currently also a board member of CDPA and has rich experience in coaching and judging debate tournaments. He first explained the purpose of the debate tournament, analyzed the content of this match, and, speaking as a civic education teacher, offered insights on how to think about the mulee account issue from the perspective of rule-of-law education.

First, by setting narrower discussion targets, the debate competition achieves the purpose of focused discussion. After digging deep into a specific issue, it allows us to step back, open up our thoughts, and examine different dimensions of the issue one by one. Second, the reason the organizing committee repeatedly reminded the affirmative and negative representatives that their stances did not represent their personal views is that debate tournament positions are actually assigned by drawing lots. Standing in different positions allows you to better understand and recognize them. Regarding the content of the competition, the first half of both the affirmative and negative sides focused on legislative techniques and whether the statutory provisions were sufficiently clear. However, this is not a question of whether a policy should be implemented, but rather enters into the details and adjustments of the policy. Both sides' discussions assumed how courts would make determinations, while ignoring a possibility: whether it might be possible to use legislation to spell out in greater detail what constitutes "without justifiable reason." In the second half of the competition, the affirmative side argued that when a small-to-medium enterprise owner hands their account over to an employee to handle, it seemingly destroys trust in the financial system and should therefore be punished. The negative side argued that young criminals and the homeless are already penalized by current laws, and after future legislation is enacted, they may become even more easily trapped within these restrictions. What we need to discuss today is whether these individuals should be punished, what the interests of punishing them are, and what the reasons for not punishing them are.

From the perspective of rule-of-law education, starting in January 2023, individuals turning 18 will be considered adults. We grant 18-year-olds the rights due to adults, but they must also bear the corresponding legal responsibilities. If they open an account and hand it over to someone else without careful consideration, this becomes an important issue for rule-of-law education. If rule-of-law education merely degenerates into the memorization of statutory provisions, it easily alienates students. The government should think more about how to cultivate high school students as lifelong learners who can receive, understand, and process information when facing constantly changing and adjusting laws.

Finally, in real life, it is not uncommon for children to use their parents' ATM cards to handle various matters. This stems from current heavy restrictions on account opening for minors. Students going north to study may not be able to open accounts themselves, and their parents may be too busy to take them. After future legislation, whether such cases will increase the risk of going to court is also an issue worthy of further discussion.

Next, Professor Ying-Chieh Lu from the Department of Law at National Chung Cheng University took part in the dialogue. Having long focused on the protection of victims' rights, Professor Lu first approached the topic from the perspective of victim protection, then shared the operational realities of judicial practice, and called for more empirical legal research foundations when considering whether legislation is appropriate.

Professor Lu had previously supervised a master's thesis researching mule accounts. The legislative recommendation at that time was to make account opening more difficult, and banks should also use warning accounts and frozen accounts to prevent scam syndicates from withdrawing all the money, thereby enabling funds to be returned to victims. However, more than ten years later today, amidst social changes and technological developments, online accounts can be applied for simply with a mobile phone number. Whether virtual accounts are covered by existing statutory provisions requires further deliberation.

Judicial practice currently penalizes these acts as aiding and abetting offenses, but it requires proving whether the aider actually knew that the recipient of the account would engage in fraudulent behavior. This is not only an evidentiary puzzle, but also leads to practical deductions based on concepts such as indirect intent in aiding. Professor Lu believes that strictly speaking, these approaches are problematic. Furthermore, many defendants argue that they handed over their accounts in the course of looking for a job, and Line chat logs submitted as evidence can easily be fabricated. Prosecutors lack the capacity to verify all of them, resulting in limitations and difficulties in practical case-handling. Therefore, legislators should face these practical dilemmas head-on when drafting legislation.

Finally, regarding those currently convicted based on delivering mule accounts, statistics and extensive collation may be needed regarding their age structure, educational background, and economic status in order to understand which groups are more likely to fall into the traps of scam syndicates. If research results show that a large proportion are disadvantaged groups who were tricked into handing over accounts, we need to consider why these people are targeted, whether they are also indirect victims, or if young people make up the majority, what the reasons are for young people being deceived and what needs to be improved and adjusted. Such data can support and help us conduct legislative advocacy and persuasion.

The moderator also responded to the issue of empirical legal research. According to National Police Agency statistics from January to July 2021 regarding the gender ratio and age structure of mule account cases, the average age was 24.2 years old, clearly showing that the majority of those involved are students or fresh graduates. The JRF has also analyzed and calculated conviction rates from public judgment data, but has not conducted qualitative research. One dilemma is that qualitative analysis involves various characteristics of the defendant, and one must deliberate on what concepts to use for description. Another dilemma is that many cases currently take the form of summary judgments, and everyone may have their own preconceived mental image of these defendants. Relying on the personal impressions of lawyers and prosecutors to understand this group is insufficient, and empirical research is needed.

Next, the third panelist, Assistant Professor Kuo-Hsing Hsieh from the Department of Law at National Chung Cheng University, who has also previously served as a debate team coach, first offered advice to the debaters on both sides before cutting into the legal dimension. Through case design, he led everyone to reflect on whether the objective of legislative punishment risks overreach.

Professor Hsieh first noted that debate training is indeed necessary, and suggested that today's affirmative and negative debaters could set aside current legal provisions and begin thinking from the essence of the problem. Using a loan case as an example, Professor Hsieh described a party V who applied for a loan from a loan company. The company asked V for their account, stating that funds would be transferred once the lending procedures were met. It was later discovered that the loan company was actually a scam syndicate. In this case, why was there a situation involving meager profits? And did this case meet the elements of "without justifiable reason"? Moreover, in typical fraud and money laundering cases, current laws already penalize aiding and abetting. If we are to add Article 15-1 of the Money Laundering Control Act, will such acts still be penalized as aiding and abetting? Or will they be principal offenses under this provision? Whether alternative solutions are more appropriate than existing punishments all deserve further consideration. Professor Hsieh also reminded everyone that comparative law research remains immature and may need continued strengthening.

Finally, Professor Hsieh mentioned that some people hand over accounts not necessarily to make meager profits. Although the legislative reasoning states that there have been various campaigns warning people not to casually hand over mule accounts, many people may still be deceived. At this point, whether our purpose in punishing with criminal law targets their greed or their foolishness remains doubtful. If practical operations continue to treat this category of cases as the majority—rather than typical fraud and money laundering cases—there may be a problem of legislative over-targeting.

Following the remarks of the three distinguished guests, the event moved to the general discussion and Q&A session, in which both the guests and debaters participated together.

First, the moderator raised the issue of legal concurrence. Regardless of how the text of the new law is designed, under current circumstances, there are instances where individuals are prosecuted as accomplices to money laundering. How will the same behavior be handled after the legislation? Professor Lu mentioned that aiding and abetting under the Money Laundering Control Act carries a heavier penalty, while delivering a mule account is lighter; after imaginative concurrence, the new law might end up unused. Professor Hsieh stated that whether such a problem calls for adjusting statutory penalties or re-planning the entire legal framework requires further consideration.

Next, continuing Professor Hsieh's remarks, whether it is appropriate to penalize individuals who lack the intent to make meager profits is actually related to our obligations and expectations regarding people protecting their accounts. Hung Yu-chen, an affirmative representative, responded that the affirmative side believes delivering accounts should be punished precisely to ensure comprehensive legal interest protection. Their argument refers to the legislative intent—namely, that after years of government campaigns, everyone should have a certain level of awareness regarding account protection. To protect the stability of financial order, people are urged not to casually neglect and hand over accounts. Even if you do not realize that handing over an account may be linked to subsequent money laundering crimes, if you do not recklessly hand over accounts, money laundering crimes and the operations of scam syndicates would not be so easily achieved. Cheng-Yu Tsai, another affirmative representative, also responded that the loan case mentioned by Professor Hsieh may seem devoid of the intent to gain meager profits, but ordinarily, when borrowing from a financial institution, one does not need to hand over one's account. It is rather strange if someone is borrowing money from you yet can access the money in your account. Such a situation might stem from their credit or employment status preventing them from obtaining a loan, driving them to seek help from a scam syndicate and hand over their account and ATM card. This might also involve the intent to exploit loopholes. Determining whether there is justification for punishing such borderline examples and how to evaluate them presents certain difficulties.

Professor Hsieh briefly responded to this: First, even for the protection of legal interests, the affirmative side's legislation does not set a subjective constituent element and completely bypasses the possibility of foresight; one must consider whether there is an issue of overreach. Second, regarding loan cases, current High Court opinions mostly view them as non-punishable, finding no intent to aid and abet. If we were to use the new law to punish these people today, it would be equivalent to overturning past conclusions that such acts should not be punished, which requires further deliberation.

The preceding discussion was still based on the legislative bill proposed by the Ministry of Justice. However, negative representative Hsun-Hao Li also proposed his own revised version of the legislation for discussion with the professors.Hsun-Hao Li argued that money laundering problems still require regulation through criminal law, but the targeted objects must be more precisely defined. He proposed adding an element of "intent to profit." If a profit-making process is involved, the structure itself generates greater risks, and the subsequent likelihood of infringing upon legal interests increases dramatically. Furthermore, this element is already applied more maturely in current judicial practice.

Professor Lu responded that legislating in this direction is possible, but one must note that proving the quid pro quo relationship is still necessary. Professor Hsieh responded that he largely agrees with the general direction—it would certainly be better than "without justifiable reason." However, because delivering accounts takes many different forms, whether all situations can be exhaustively listed or if a general clause is still needed, as well as how to determine liability when payments have not yet been received, all require careful deliberation, and empirical research may be needed to more precisely define the scope of punishment.

Today, the negative representatives also mentioned that criminal law should be used as a last resort, and asked whether there are other methods of regulation. Audience members raised the same question. Section Chief Kuo believed that opening accounts is currently very easy, especially online authorized accounts, and asked whether stricter management could be implemented at the front end of account opening. The moderator added that many prosecutors have submitted opinion pieces pointing out that the judicial system encounters the muleef account problem at a very late stage; to fundamentally reduce the source of cases, stricter and more complex procedures are required during front-end financial supervision. Additionally, some have suggested charging account management fees for dormant accounts. Cheng-Yu Tsai, an affirmative representative who formerly worked as legal counsel for a financial institution, responded that Section Chief Kuo might find account opening easy due to his status as a public servant or educator. If lawyers or accountants try to open accounts, they are more easily viewed as high-risk individuals; based on his own experience, he was once refused online account opening. As for the issue of canceling accounts, financial institutions are quite unwilling because canceling an account is equivalent to losing the opportunity to interact with a customer. If account management fees are to be charged, customers might transfer accounts due to a specific account becoming unusable, which would require coordination between regulatory authorities and financial institutions. In fact, financial institutions themselves are heavily regulated organizations; aside from regulators, financial institutions are also burdened with considerable obligations. Professor Lu supplemented this by noting that the Control Yuan's consultative meetings have also touched upon the issue of account opening being too easy, but everyone in attendance felt helpless because many business entities cooperate with various banks, and this matter touches upon the survival interests of financial institutions.

Finally, the moderator concluded with the concept of digital governance, noting that with the development of information technology, our concept of privacy has failed to keep pace with the times, leading to the continuous flow of people's personal data into the hands of scam syndicates. This echoes Professor Hsieh's concept of legal lag. How to regulate infinitely changing facts with limited textual concepts remains something we must continue to ponder. Furthermore, we can no longer rely on a single discipline; only through interdisciplinary integration and cooperation with disciplines such as accounting can the problem be resolved. Currently, this draft bill still needs to pass the Executive Yuan Council and be sent to the Legislative Yuan. Today's debate and seminar merely opened up discussions, and everyone is welcome to think critically about this issue together.