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News this week that Indonesia has entered debt restructuring negotiations with China over its Jakarta-Bandung high speed rail mega-project should have come as no surprise.

Indonesian officials announced publicly more than three years ago, before the rail became operational, that it would be 40 years before the project broke even. Uncertainty around a planned relocation of the capital to the island of Borneo complicated the projections for user numbers. But even as those plans lie dormant and underfunded, the head of the state-owned rail operator labelled the project a financial “ticking time bomb”.

China’s exports of its high-speed train expertise and financing packages constitute a hallmark of its offer as a development partner to Southeast Asia.

But construction in Indonesia was marred from the start, leading to a delay of four years and a cost blow-out of $1.2 billion above the original estimate. The Jakarta-Bandung was Southeast Asia’s first high-speed railway, known as Whoosh, but it is one in a series of similar China-backed projects at varying levels of completion. Officials around the region will be closely watching these negotiations.

There is precedent. In both Thailand and Malaysia, high-speed rail projects that were originally backed by Chinese loans were renegotiated and restructured after disputes about perceived debt traps and corruption. Construction on both is proceeding, but with drastically reduced reliance on finance from China.

A similar story is unfolding in the Philippines, though the problem there is arguably more political than fiscal. Three rail projects, worth an estimated total of US$5 billion in concessional loans from China, were cancelled in 2023 amid deteriorating bilateral ties.

Things are different in the smaller countries of mainland Southeast Asia. Lessons in railway debt negotiations might come too late for Laos, where a line from Vientiane to Boten on the border with China was completed in 2021. The Asian Development Bank has predicted that the project and the associated loan could “present a very large contingent liability” and deemed it “unlikely to bring major economic benefits.”

Cambodia is also eager to attract China’s support for a US$4 billion high-speed rail, despite some recent unexplained lapses in financing from Beijing to Phnom Penh.

In Myanmar, the ostracised junta is reportedly still seeking financing from China for the long-debated Muse-Mandalay railroad, part of the troubled China-Myanmar Economic Corridor. For Myanmar’s crippled and fragile economy, the risk of an unsustainable debt burden is immense.

It’s plain that the shine has not totally worn off China’s infrastructure mega-projects in Southeast Asia.

Outside of Jakarta, the keenest eyes on the restructuring negotiations will likely be in Hanoi. In February, Vietnam approved loans from China to build a new conventional railway in the north of the country. The exact amount of that financing package isn’t clear yet, but the project is estimated to cost more than US$8 billion in total.

Additionally, Hanoi’s breathless ambition for a north-south high-speed rail won’t be deterred by the astronomical bill, close to US$70 billion. Officials have, at various points in the past 12 months, sworn off and welcomed foreign funding. China appears the front-runner to supply the technology but Japan, the region’s second-largest transport provider, has also expressed interest.

Given sustained interest from Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam, it’s plain that the shine has not totally worn off China’s infrastructure mega-projects in Southeast Asia. But the financial floundering of the region’s first high-speed rail, in the region’s largest country, ought to prompt second thoughts.

The City regulator has called on banks and payment firms to bring in stricter controls protecting customers from romance fraud after a study showed a number of missed “red flags” that led to people losing huge sums of money.

The review by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) highlighted one case where someone lost £428,000, another where a customer made 403 payments totalling £72,000 to a fraudster and a case where someone wanted money to transfer cryptocurrency to their “partner” in Iraq.

Romance scams, where criminals try to build emotional connections with victims before defrauding them, have been growing in scale and complexity in recent years.

Figures from the City of London police put the loss from romance fraud at £106m last year, although the FCA says the real figure is much higher as many people do not report the crime owing to feelings of shame and stigma.

The FCA review of six banks and payment firms looked at how they detect and prevent romance fraud and found large disparities in how victims of fraud were treated. “Despite examples of good practice, there were multiple instances of firms missing opportunities to identify seemingly suspicious transactions,” it said. The study found 60 fraud cases, ranging from £100 to £428,249.

Most of the scams (85%) emerged from relationships built by the fraudsters on social media and dating sites. In one case, a firm failed to identify fraud when six payments totalling more than £131,000 were sent overseas.

In almost half of the cases, the victims did not give the real reason for payments. In another fraud that went through, a victim made 15 international payments, worth £190,000, and claimed to be buying international property. But the staff handling the transactions did not seek documentation or question the use of multiple accounts in different names, said the report.

The FCA report said some firms did not properly safeguard victims after the fraud emerged, even though there were clear signs they were vulnerable. “For example, one victim expressed suicidal thoughts and another received threats of violence from the fraudster,” it said.

The watchdog said banks and payment providers could bring in measures to better protect customers, including improved monitoring systems, better training for staff and providing compassionate aftercare.

Steve Smart, the FCA’s joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight, described romance fraud as a “vicious crime”, adding: “All too often it is the vulnerable that fall victim. The impact – financially and personally – can be devastating.”

Fraudsters typically try to identify people who are lonely or isolated. They often claim to be working abroad, and are therefore unable to meet, and say they need money to fund a medical emergency.

Santander has said it has seen almost £5.5m stolen through romance frauds since the start of the year. Michelle Pilsworth, the bank’s head of fraud, said the criminals increasingly ask for gift cards from victims.

The consumer group Which? said banks and payment operators that fail to protect customers should have action taken against them.