Op-Ed | The Amendment to the "Financial Eight Laws" Was Well-Intended, Yet Leaves Victims with No End in Sight to Recovering Their Property

The occurrence of a crime is frequently accompanied by property loss for the victims. Although the Criminal Code confiscates criminal proceeds to the state alongside sentencing in order to "deprive criminals of their illicit gains," Article 473 of the Code of Criminal Procedure allows "rights holders" (such as fraud victims) to apply to the prosecutor for the return of confiscated items (such as funds obtained through fraud) "within one year after the judgment becomes final."

Victims should have been able to apply for the return of criminal proceeds in accordance with the Code of Criminal Procedure. However, the Judicial Reform Foundation recently received complaints and discovered that this seemingly natural procedure of "returning property to its rightful owner" encounters numerous difficulties in practice.

Our client, Ms. Li, who lodged a complaint with us, is a victim of a fraud case involving the Banking Act. Within the LINE group consisting of her and approximately three hundred other victims, many found that due to the massive number of victims and the wide range of persons with claims for damages involved in the case, even though the perpetrator has been convicted, the criminal proceeds have been seized, and the distribution procedure has stalled for a long time, making them unable to receive the funds they deserve, thereby rendering their lives difficult to manage and their families unable to settle down.

The Problem of Impossibility of Return Originates from a Well-Intended Amendment

In the past, victims of many financial crimes often missed the time limit of "applying for return within one year" under Article 473 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Once overdue, the criminal proceeds went directly into the national treasury, and the victims' right to preferential compensation disappeared accordingly.

Therefore, on February 2, 2018, the Legislative Yuan amended the relevant regulations commonly known as the "Financial Eight Laws" at once, including the Banking Act, the Insurance Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, the Trust Enterprise Act, the Financial Holding Company Act, the Credit Cooperative Act, the Bills Finance Act, and the Securities Investment Trust and Consulting Act. Provisions were added stating: "Where a crime under this Act is committed, and the criminal proceeds are acquired by the perpetrator or a natural person, legal person, or non-legal body other than the perpetrator under the circumstances listed in Article 38-1, Paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code, such proceeds shall be confiscated, except for those that should be returned to the victim or the person entitled to claim damages." This excluded the portion where "victims or persons entitled to claim damages" apply for return from the scope of confiscation.

Practical opinions emerging after the amendment (such as Supreme Court Ruling 112-Tai-Kang-Tzu-No. 1585) also clearly revealed that this legal amendment was intended to exclude the time limit provisions of Article 473 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, hoping to enable victims to obtain compensation more smoothly. However, this ill-considered amendment became the origin of nightmares for the prosecutors' offices at the enforcement end and for the victims.

Continually Waiting in Vain for the Return of Criminal Proceeds? It Is Not That Prosecutors Refuse, But That They "Cannot"!

The so-called "potential victim clause" newly added by legislators this time may seem to protect victims, but in practice, the result is that return is simply impossible to carry out. The Judicial Reform Foundation once sent an official letter to the prosecutors' office hoping to assist our client in understanding when the return could take place, yet the official response was: "To date, there are still more than two thousand victims in this case who have not submitted an application to this office, so this office cannot proceed with subsequent matters following the aforementioned public announcement."

We also called the prosecutors' office to understand the situation and learned that when prosecutors face such cases, often by the time the distribution table is already completed, a new victim's application appears, forcing them to redo it. Under the regulation without a time limit, prosecutors simply have no way to lawfully complete the return procedure. If the law is not amended, it will not only fail to resolve the victims' problems but will also keep frontline prosecutors trapped in a dilemma.

How to Resolve This Impasse? Is All It Takes "a Time Limit"?

The biggest problem with this amendment lies precisely in the lack of a "time limit." The design lacking a "time limit" plunges the "distribution" of criminal proceeds into endless waiting, making it impossible for prosecutors to effectuate returns even if they want to!

For victims like Ms. Li, there are over three hundred just within the group chat, and one can imagine that many average investors involved in litigation might encounter this situation as well! Certainly, some scholars have pointed out that resolving the impasse requires directly deleting this "potential victim clause"; however, for victims and persons entitled to claim damages, before major institutional adjustments are made, simply adding a time limit to balance fairness and efficiency might also be an intuitive direction for legal amendment.

Only by doing so can judicial resources be reasonably utilized, and families and individuals who have long been trapped in the endless waiting of judicial proceedings can finally obtain the economic resources returned to their rightful owners and live in peace of mind.

※ This article was published in ETtoday Forum on October 9, 2025