The immigration charge alleges he used a British passport with a fictitious name to travel in and out of Taiwan 26 times.

A statement from the Taipei prosecutor's office said Cox established Mendes Prior with headquarters in Latvia and the Czech Republic before opening offices in Taipei, Kaohsiung, Manila, Jakarta and Mauritius. Prosecutors are seeking a 10-year prison sentence and a fine of NT$3 million (HK$680,000) for Cox.

One Hong Kong businessman said he had lost up to US$50,000 after being talked into buying technology-related stocks by a Mendes Prior broker who told him he was operating from Malaysia and had 'inside information' their prices would rise.

The Taiwanese prosecutor's statement said salesmen using fake names worked from Taiwan calling potential investors on phones which were switched through Indonesia to disguise the calls' origin.

An investigator who has been working on the case for a group of victims pursuing Cox's assets said an alleged Mendes Prior scheme had involved selling a block of land in Estonia, claimed to have been earmarked for development by a multinational company, to many different investors 'over and over again'.

It had operated through a Hong Kong company along with a Singaporean firm, and a Wan Chai address was listed on marketing material, said the investigator.

A key Mendes Prior executive was said to have been a paid informant of the Stasi, the communist-era East German secret police.

Records from the Mendes Prior operation obtained by the South China Morning Post showed 28 Hong Kong residents were among the victims who had been persuaded to part with money. Their investments ranged from a few thousand US dollars to US$218,750 and totalled nearly US$2 million.

Investors in Malaysia and Singapore were estimated to have paid out a total of at least US$20 million while those in Taiwan lost a minimum of US$10 million, said a source associated with an investigation into Mendes Prior.

Authorities in Taiwan were alerted to Cox's presence there by a group of investors who claim to have been victims of another alleged swindle he conducted in Europe during the early 1990s using a company called Grimaldi Hofmann et Cie which purported to deal in North American stocks.

The victims have formed a group known as the 'Circle of Grimaldi Hofmann Investors' which has employed an international investigations agency to locate assets associated with Cox. They fear Cox might be seeking to strike a deal with Taiwanese victims to help secure his release.

'Our information tells us that Cox will get a plea bargain, in which he reimburses his victims in Taiwan, and them only, which would be about US$10 million,' said the group's chairman, Goran Struwe.

The 150-member investors' group had already spent more than US$200,000 in its efforts to locate Cox and seize his assets.

Dr Struwe said he had been told Cox was among the top three operators of 'boiler rooms' in the world and believed his assets could be worth between US$200,000 and US$1 billion.

Cox was found guilty, with 14 alleged accomplices, in January this year by a Belgian court of fraud relating to Grimaldi Hofmann and ordered to serve a 10-year prison sentence. His arrest had been ordered by the Court of First Instance in Brussels.

Prosecutors had not yet applied for the execution of the court verdict as an appeal by 12 of those convicted, including Cox, has yet to be determined by a higher court, said Detective Chief Inspector Marc Hoslteyn, of the Belgian federal police.

The investors' group had pursued a civil claim at the same time as the criminal court hearings and had been awarded the return of the US$18 million its members had lost, said Dr Struwe.

Cox's lawyer in Taipei did not respond to the Post when requested to comment.