Opposition Post-Match Commentary | Strengthening Financial Supervisory Measures Is More Important Than Adding Criminal Liability in Fraud Prevention Policies | 2023 Judicial Reform Cup National High School and Vocational High School Debate Competition

The author was honored to be invited as a judge for the "2023 Judicial Reform Cup National High School and Vocational High School Debate Competition" co-hosted by the JRF and CDPA, and to write this article. The following content evaluates the motion and the competition from the perspective of a debate judge, focusing more on the clash on the floor rather than legal theory or practical discussions, in the hope of opening up more perspectives for discussion on the issue from a debating angle.

Starting from the perspective of the opposition, this article is divided into three parts: commentary on the motion, commentary on competition execution, and a brief conclusion.

I. Commentary on the Motion

In response to the endless stream of dummy-account fraud cases, the Ministry of Justice added the "dummy account offense" in the amendments to the Money Laundering Control Act, stipulating that citizens shall not provide their financial accounts to others for use without justifiable reason. This amended provision passed its third reading in the Legislative Yuan in May of this year (2023). However, the relevant legal amendments have also sparked controversy because they may lead citizens to violate the law unknowingly, and are particularly unfavorable to vulnerable groups with weaker information reception capabilities or poorer economic conditions.

Should fraud prevention be addressed through such additions of criminal liability, or are there other non-criminal means to handle it? For instance, are the measures actively strengthened by the Financial Supervisory Commission in recent years—such as public awareness campaigns, over-the-counter care by bank personnel, adding warning labels, and regulating virtual asset exchange platform operators—more appropriate? This gave rise to the motion for this competition: "In fraud prevention policies, adding criminal liability is more important than strengthening financial supervisory measures / In fraud prevention policies, strengthening financial supervisory measures is more important than adding criminal liability."

This type of motion design is known as a "dual-motion system" and tends more toward the format of a "value motion." Unlike a "policy motion," it does not directly discuss whether a specific policy should be implemented, but rather more broadly discusses how to weigh two values. For high school debaters with less competition experience, handling such a motion is relatively difficult. Firstly, debate competitions for high schools in Taiwan are still predominantly policy-based; secondly, the motion is more abstract. If the clashes and focal points of the competition are to be clear, both teams need to be able to grasp the core of the battlefield and the benchmarks for comparison. In actual competition conditions, the debaters' grasp of this area was relatively insufficient, and many matches devolved into talking past each other, lacking focused discussion.

Additionally, because this topic involves everyday banking transaction experiences, such as remitting funds and interacting with bank tellers, many high school debaters actually lack relevant experience. Consequently, they struggled more with the discussion, and arguments that defied real-life experiences easily arose, which is a regrettable shortcoming.

II. Commentary on Competition Execution

Taking the opposition side that I judged in this competition as an example, the main axis of their arguments mostly revolved around "why financial supervisory measures are more effective for fraud prevention." I have synthesized this into four points for discussion:

1. Setting the Comparative Benchmark

I believe that the two targets set by this motion—criminal liability and financial supervisory measures—actually coexist in real society. Therefore, if debaters wish to make a comparison that is closer to reality and more socially persuasive, they need to understand that this competition is not an "all-or-nothing" comparison where only one measure can be chosen, but rather a discussion of "both things must be done, but which measure is more important at the current stage." If this premise of the discussion is clear, many attacks and defenses can be avoided on the floor. For example, some affirmative teams questioned the opposition by asking whether fraud crimes would go unpunished in the absence of criminal liability. But in fact, it is impossible for us to completely abandon either measure. Therefore, on the basis that both things exist, the affirmative's questioning is actually meaningless.

Taking the discussion a step further, the question is how to set the benchmark for this "greater importance," which in fact has no absolute answer. The opposition can operate differently depending on the tone of their arguments. For instance, arguing that the public recognition and perceived importance of current financial supervisory measures are generally lower in society, and therefore they are more in need of being elevated at the current stage, is one way of comparison. Arguing that financial supervisory measures offer greater flexibility and leave more room for diverse measures to complement each other compared to criminal liability, thereby addressing a wider variety of incident patterns, is also a way of comparison. Of course, there can be many ways to compare, but the most important thing is that debaters must possess a comparative consciousness to prevent discussions from degenerating into mere point-counterpoint attacks or the recitation of data.

2. Explaining the Advantages of Financial Supervisory Measures

I believe that compared to adding criminal liability, what specific practices are included in strengthening financial supervisory measures is relatively unintuitive. Therefore, this part relies more heavily on opposition debaters' verbal depiction of the practices and specific effectiveness of these measures. In this competition, I consider this to be something opposition debaters needed to accomplish, yet it was relatively lacking. Most debaters fell into the trap of repeating the conclusions of single pieces of data—for example, citing evidence that banks' over-the-counter care prevented fraud exceeding NT$4.2 billion in 2022. While such evidence is certainly valid, I believe that whether one wants to argue that financial supervisory measures are more flexible or better at ex-ante prevention, one must describe "how it is achieved" and "what it adds compared to adding criminal liability." The clearer the depiction of the scenario, the easier it is to leave a positive impression in the judges' minds.

3. Limited Fraud-Prevention Effects of Adding Criminal Liability

Some schools used the addition of the dummy account offense as an example to argue that many people embroiled in related cases are in an unconscious state; hence, even if relevant criminal penalties are added, it is difficult to prevent incidents from occurring. Alternatively, they argued that such practices can only catch the lower tiers of a syndicate, but are of no help in arresting the ringleaders. I think the direction and materials of such arguments are good, but what is somewhat regrettable is that most of the opposition teams I judged only spoke of the beginning of this matter, lacking further materials and data to enrich their arguments. Moreover, when the affirmative further presented data showing that adding criminal liability helps reduce fraud crimes, the opposition should have more actively examined and dismantled these data in order to move the battlefield effects more clearly toward the ineffectiveness of the affirmative's measures.

4. Potential Negative Issues of Adding Criminal Liability

This part of the argument is something I feel opposition debaters could have utilized, but did not encounter in the matches I judged. Most debaters stopped at the third point mentioned above—namely, only arguing that adding criminal liability might have poor effects. But I believe the negative effects that adding criminal liability might bring should also be incorporated into the opposition's arguments, as this can increase the material available to the opposition when making comparisons. For example, adding criminal liability would plunge more vulnerable people into hardship; heavy penalization would exacerbate the concealment of crimes; or, in terms of elevating the ultimate value, arguing that blindly resorting to heavy penalization is of no help in addressing the social structure and causes of crimes in Taiwan, treating the symptoms rather than the root cause.

III. Conclusion

Overall, I believe the discussion on this topic is indeed very important and meaningful for Taiwanese society. If debaters can gain a greater understanding of real-life situations and vividly depict scenarios when preparing for the competition, it will further enhance the depth of the competition's discussion. Given that this competition set the topic as a value motion, if the opposition could have more profoundly addressed "the problems that arise when dealing with crime through the addition of criminal liability," the discussion in the matches would have been even more fascinating.