That’s extremely difficult because the FSC’s mission is to monitor financial institutions and they do not really interact with the general public directly. That’s why I mentioned the possibility to sue the banks. If they actually break the law then the odds would be better.
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true, but that requires courts and lawyers and whatnot. I am a cheap basterd haha, would avoid courts as much as possible.
funny, monitor FIs but then can’t receive whistleblower or financial consumer reports. That’s a real asymmetry.
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Also lots of money.
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I apparently received ten calls from the FSC today, but I wasn’t paying attention to my phone and missed them.
I wonder what that was about. 
I guess I’ll need to wait until Monday to find out. I’m 80% sure they’ve already rejected my appeal anyway, because I got the slip telling me to go to the post office through the mailbox yesterday and I’m not expecting any other registered mail.
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That’s borderline doxxing
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A civil servant’s manager set an urgent and arbitrary deadline to change the status field in a spreadsheet.
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I’m curious as to why the FSC’s response to a complaint is not an administrative action? Their decision not to act on a complaint is merely “informational”?
This relates to the complaint about opening bank accounts.
Take a look at this especially Article 2.
My understanding is that this approach closely follows German law.
The FSC has the power to supervise banks. But it is the bank that decides to open an account or not. The FSC did not act (or fail to act) in the context of his complaint. Classic example of government acts are approval/denial of applications and the imposition of fines and other sanctions.
See also Article 92
The term “administrative disposition” in this Act denotes a unilateral administrative act with direct external effects, rendered by an administrative authority in making a decision or taking other actions within its public authority, in respect of a specific matter in the area of public law.
His complaint was treated as a petition because he was “report[ing] on acts in breach of law or neglect of administrative duties or protection of the [people’s] rights and interest in administration.”
See Chapter VII Article 168 on.
https://law.moj.gov.tw/ENG/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=A0030055
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Yes, I came to the that understanding. Administrative actions are extremely narrowly interpreted and recognised here. It must be a decision to an application for something within the agency remit.
I checked Italian regulations about how to report violations of FIs to the regulators, and in Italy beside the Bank of Italy (central bank) we have the FOI too (financial and banking referee is called). Its decisions are not binding (unless you bring them to a judge for a court order, which takes time and money) and technically those decisions are not an administrative act appealable to the administrative courts (it is clearly stated in the terms to lodge a complaint/report).
So in this case what is the correct path to litigate a violation of the non-discrimination clause? Do you need to directly sue the bank in (which?) court?
A Taiwanese lawyer somewhere above thought that suing the bank would be the right way to get a remedy. I doubt you would get more than NT$10,000 in token damages though.
In theory, you can file a complaint with the National Immigration Agency. They have the power to impose fines. My understanding is that they never find discrimination.
Part of the problem is that Taiwan doesn’t really understand discrimination except that it is a bad thing you don’t want to be accused of. This make sense since it considered itself to have no minorities until recently.
From what I have seen, action gets taken on discrimation only if someone does or says something that is deeply offensive to indigenous or disabled people. Even then, most of the pressure is social.
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The FSC called me back just now. Only three missed calls today.
The main part was a bit of a silly, confusing, bureaucratic discussion about what the “object” of my appeal was. Apparently on the appeal form I’d entered the wrong number in the administrative sanction letter box (“行政處分書發文日期及文號”). The FSC had given me at least five different numbers during my previous communications with them — one for each of my two messages submitted through the online form, some kind of separate case number during the first message from them, and two different numbers (labeled “Ref” and “Message number”) on the Banking Bureau’s final short response in December — and I’d used what I assumed was the number representing the overall case rather than the “message number” (“銀局(控)字第”) as I apparently should have done (which I’d also cited elsewhere in the appeal). 
So they wanted to check whether I was appealing against my own initial complaint to the FSC or the FSC’s response to it. We went around in circles for a bit while I was waiting for my computer and myself to start up so I could check which numbers I’d used and should have used, and in the end we confirmed that I was appealing against the Banking Bureau’s inaction to my initial complaint, as might seem obvious.
This followed a worrying start to the call where the guy was indicating I’d need to translate my original complaint and the Banking Bureau’s response to me into Chinese because supporting materials might need to be in Chinese as well. I asked him whether they couldn’t perhaps just look at what the Banking Bureau had sent and responded to, and in the end it wasn’t necessary. He also asked me how I’d been able to submit the appeal in Chinese, and he was fine with the answer (ChatGPT and a friend quickly checking) and said I had the right to appeal.
The guy was alright actually, and we then spent a good 20 minutes chatting about the appeals procedure. I mentioned that the FSC appears to have rejected approximately 100% of the appeals listed on its website, and he was surprised that I knew that and confirmed that this is the most likely outcome of an appeal to the FSC, or government agencies in general. He mentioned that the system was based on the French system and that administrative appeals aren’t usually successful and rarely result in higher administrative agencies disagreeing with lower agencies, including in other countries. He noted that I’d still have the right to appeal the case to the court but an administrative appeal in itself was unlikely to be “successful” (as already indicated upthread).
He was talking in a general sense here and kind of off the record, because I don’t think he’s the one responsible for deciding the outcome, but the key point, as I think also already mentioned above, is apparently that the Administrative Appeal Act only covers situations where the person’s rights or interests were injured by government actions (and possibly inactions), but not where they were injured by another organization such as a bank.
I suppose that kind of makes sense. He said I should probably receive a response to the appeal by late April.
I’m not sure about after that — I haven’t decided yet whether to follow @Mataiou’s approach of trying the Control Yuan, something with the FOI (?), or just dropping it. The Richart/Taishin/JKO promotion I originally complained about is ending this month anyway, though Richart/Taishin previously said they’re intending to run another different promotion when it does and foreigners still can’t apply right now.
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Lesson learnt: never take inspiration form the Frenchies haha (which we Italians already know full well)
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My initial thought was to sue the bank in the civil court and demand that they approve your applications. It will take some serious research before I can come up with a plausible cause of action and even so it might be a weak case that will be thrown out of court. That said, this route would stand a slightly better chance than administrative appeal/litigation, which as @Andrew cogently points out, is almost guaranteed to fail. If you do win in civil court, damages awarded would be nominal at best but that’s beside the point.
Because Taiwan’s legal system does not allow judges to make law, it is frankly not sensible to expect changes from the judiciary. These types of cases are best dealt with by raising awareness, pushing for social reform and persistent lobbying, all of which takes considerable time and resources. Perhaps you can try to find a large group of plaintiffs, file the case and get media coverage. That might be the fastest way but do keep in mind that mainstream Taiwanese media is…pretty messed up to say the least.
Very insightful observation. Couldn’t agree more. I was born and raised here in Taiwan, but spent a little while living in the US and I fully understand what it means to be in the minority. I just wish I could be more helpful as a lawyer.
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I guess only constitutional court and supreme court judgments can strike down unconstitutional or “unlawful” articles or acts as it happens in Italy. But it’s only striking down, they can’t formulate something new, that can only be done by the legislature.
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This is pretty understandable, but it is not possible for judges to order companies to obey the current law? Or just highly unlikely?
I mean, what is even the point of having laws if it’s impossible to have them enforced in any meaningful way?
If you’re referring to the anti-discrimination law (Article 62 of the Immigration Act), it has not been applied in any civil cases so far (at least not according to publicly available information). It has been brought up in a few administrative cases but no meaningful discussion was made. So to answer your question, I think it’s possible, it’s just that no one has challenged it in court and made it to final adjudication yet.
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Well, I think I’ve figured out why they were trying so urgently to call me.
I finally collected the letter waiting for me at the post office on Friday… and at the time of the phone call checking what I was appealing about and indicating my appeal had yet to be considered, they’d already mailed out the letter rejecting it. Oops! 
(I haven’t properly read it yet, because there are like 20-25 pages in Chinese and I was busy this weekend.)
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nothing new under the sun