Taiwan's best-known charity was defrauded of NT$1.06 billion while trying to buy BioNTech doses for the public. It found out only when investigators tracing a separate case came knocking — five years later.
Taiwan's best-known charitable organisation, the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation (慈濟), has been revealed to have lost NT$1.06 billion — roughly US$38 million — to fraudsters while purchasing Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT) COVID-19 vaccines five years ago.
The disclosure has jolted Taiwan for two reasons. The sum is extraordinary. But more striking still is how it surfaced: Tzu Chi did not report a crime, launch an internal inquiry, or notice a discrepancy in its own books. Prosecutors working a separate case followed a money trail and arrived at the foundation's door. Only then did Tzu Chi learn that it was the victim.
The case cuts to something specific about Taiwan's pandemic experience. Taiwan was, for a long stretch, a global model of outbreak control — and that performance was driven in large part by vulnerability rather than confidence. Excluded from the World Health Organization under pressure on its international status, and shaped by the institutional trauma of the 2003 SARS epidemic, Taipei moved early, imposed strict controls, and improvised its way around Beijing's pressure to secure doses.
It was in that environment that Tzu Chi, which had volunteered to buy vaccines and donate them to the public, paid US$38 million in so-called "consultancy fees" to brokers.
Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), then health minister and commander of Taiwan's pandemic response, had repeatedly urged caution. Vaccine procurement, he stressed, was bound by an unusually dense set of rules: individuals and standalone organisations would struggle to obtain doses from the manufacturer directly, and should be especially alert to fraud.
In the partisan crossfire of the time, that warning was recast as evidence that the governing party was obstructing vaccine supply. The accusation stuck. The US$38 million fraud went through.
Tzu Chi's failure to notice has now raised sharp questions about how the foundation keeps its books and stewards public donations. It has also reopened a harder subject: how narrow Taiwan's diplomatic and public-health options really were when every day counted.
South Korea faced a near-identical approach in the same period, and the outcome was entirely different. In 2021, the Daegu city government put a vaccine channel to the central government, claiming it could secure 30 million BNT doses. Seoul checked and found the proposed channel dubious. Daegu apologized, conceded its lapse, and lost nothing.
A money-laundering alert exposed a five-year-old fraud
The case began not with a complaint but with a bank filing.
Taiwan's Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) anti-money-laundering division received a suspicious-transaction report from a financial institution. Following it, investigators found that Chen Yu-xuan (陳昱瑄) — a lawyer and former chair of the Changhua Bar Association — and companies registered in her name were repeatedly withdrawing and transferring very large sums. That trail led back to the US$38 million taken from Tzu Chi by Chen and a broker, Li Yi-ru(李易儒), among others.
According to the MJIB's Aug. 6 statement, Chen and Li worked together to defraud the foundation. Prosecutors have searched 32 premises, including Chen's residence, seizing evidence along with more than NT$90 million in cash and close to 160 kilograms of gold. The case has entered criminal trial proceedings.
The scale of the loss is what has driven public discussion. But the investigation has also exposed something more uncomfortable — precisely how two people talked their way past an organization of Tzu Chi's size.
To understand that, it helps to return to early 2020. Global vaccine supply was scarce. Taiwan's access was constrained by sustained Chinese pressure on its international standing and by its long exclusion from the WHO. Compounding the problem, BioNTech's distribution rights across Greater China region sat with the Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group, which meant any Taiwanese purchase had to run through a Chinese intermediary. Every route was obstructed.
Against that backdrop, Taiwanese companies and charitable groups stepped forward, hoping to break the deadlock and secure doses for the public. Tzu Chi was among them, announcing in 2021 that it was willing to purchase vaccines and donate them. Established in 1980, the foundation operates on a global scale, with 514 locations across five continents and relief operations visible worldwide.
The government warned, and the brokers talked anyway
The moment Tzu Chi declared its intention, it became a target.
Brokers approached the foundation claiming to control a route to BNT supply. According to investigators, in 2021 — with the outbreak at its most severe — Chen Yu-xuan and Li Yi-ru learned from news reports that Hon Hai Precision Industry intended to buy BNT doses from the German manufacturer. They then exploited the procedural complexity of vaccine procurement and the sheer information asymmetry around it, telling Tzu Chi that the purchase would require a US$30 million consultancy fee plus subsequent cold-chain and related costs. They claimed that Hon Hai and TSMC had paid tens of millions of dollars in legal fees. Tzu Chi believed them.
The foundation did ultimately secure five million BNT doses for donation. Alongside US$175 million paid to the vaccine supplier, it handed the fraud ring a further US$38 million in "commissioned consultancy fees" and other miscellaneous charges.
Those five million doses, however, formed part of a 15-million-dose purchase jointly arranged by Tzu Chi, TSMC, Hon Hai's YongLin Foundation and the government. TSMC and Hon Hai both disclosed their costs publicly, and neither paid any additional large "consultancy fee." Tzu Chi saw nothing unusual — for five years.
Investigators say the actual buying and selling was executed by Hon Hai and TSMC. Chen and Li performed no work at all. They simply talked, and US$38 million left Tzu Chi's accounts.
Chen Shih-chung, speaking on Aug. 7, said he had warned repeatedly against vaccine brokers at the time, and that with the facts now established, those who made false accusations owed the public an apology.
"I think epidemic prevention is a matter of major national and social importance," he said. "Back then, during the election, for the sake of electoral interests, people smeared the governing team and the pandemic response team as far as they possibly could. Now the truth is out, and I believe those who made those false accusations should offer some apology to society."
Former president Tsai Ing-wen also addressed the case, noting that vaccine procurement had been considerably harder than outsiders could see. With global supply extremely tight and governments competing against one another, she said, every possible channel had to be fought for.
"Because what we were using were the nation's resources, and what we carried was the people's health and trust," she said. "Every document, every source, every payment had to be verified. We had to seize opportunities, while also preventing the country and its people from being deceived."
Did Tzu Chi's internal controls fail at every level?
The case has prompted broader doubts about the foundation's capacity to manage donated funds and scrutinise its own spending.
According to Tzu Chi's 2021 annual report, donation income for the year, domestic and overseas combined, exceeded NT$555 million, of which NT$424 million came from donors in Taiwan. The spending on the five million BNT doses — the US$175 million and the US$38 million — was recorded under a single "disaster relief expenditure" heading totalling NT$6.38 billion, with no itemized breakdown.
Long-standing Tzu Chi members, reading the indictment, have raised a more pointed objection. Dharma Master Cheng Yen (證嚴上人), the foundation's founder, is said to have questioned the "consultancy fee" at the time. Senior management, however, accepted the account given by Chen Yu-xuan — the lawyer now charged with defrauding them — and did not verify it further.
At no point in the procurement, these members note, did any control stop the fraud: not the foundation's leadership, not its legal department, not its board, not its accountants. And when the books were closed, the US$38 million "consultancy fee" carried no name of its own. It was absorbed into the broad "disaster relief expenditure" line.
For many followers and members, that is the hardest part to accept — the sense that money given in good faith was not handled with the care it deserved.
South Korea got the same offer and walked away
Tzu Chi's case has revived memories of how close a South Korean mayor came to buying vaccines that did not exist, from a third party nobody could identify.
According to reporting by the BBC and UDN Global, Daegu Mayor Kwon Young-jin said publicly in May 2021 that he had made contact with a foreign company promising 30 million BNT doses within three weeks. An opposition politician, Kwon judged that South Korea was also struggling with vaccine shortfalls, and saw an opportunity to demonstrate effort and claim a win. He went so far as to address the governing party directly.
"We have also conveyed to the government that, beyond the vaccines the government has planned to procure, there are vaccines being brought in through other channels, and considerable progress has already been made," he said.
The central government found problems with the proposal. Checking with the supplier, Pfizer, officials were told that the rights to import the vaccine into South Korea belonged to Pfizer alone, and that doses would not be supplied by any other route. Pfizer subsequently issued a statement reiterating that it would not supply vaccines to intermediaries.
South Korea's health ministry then established that the "intermediary company" listed an address in Florida while its telephone number originated in Portugal. The inconsistencies mounted. The governing party at the time said the episode had damaged the country's international image.
Once the facts were clear, Daegu came under heavy public criticism, and Kwon was forced to apologise for the reckless and ultimately empty procurement attempt, acknowledging that his own imprudent remarks had harmed the national image.
Read side by side, the two cases point to the same conclusion. When vaccines were scarce and pandemic policy had become a political battleground, that combination created exactly the opening fraudsters needed.
