Despite demands to the contrary by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers, the Cabinet-level Financial Supervisory Commission appears to have no immediate plans to suspend its Examination Bureau director-general, Lee Chin-chen (李進誠), on the strength of allegations of illegal insider trading on the stock market.
"There exists only one truth," the commission's vice-chairman Lu Daung-yen (呂東英) told the Taipei Times yesterday.
"We will disclose the facts about the case that the commission has acquired tomorrow [today] and issue a response to the legislators' demands," he said.
However, he declined to confirm if the "facts" to be revealed relate to the prosecutors' possible involvement in the illegal-trading case, which the commission alleged last week. He also remained tight-lipped about whether the commission would suspend Lee.
Lu's remarks came after DPP legislators Charles Chiang (江昭儀) and Hsieh Ming-yuan (謝明源) yesterday asked the commission's chairman, Kong Jaw-sheng (龔照勝), to remove Lee from his position as director general for his suspected illegal trading in Power Quotient International Co (勁永國際) shares.
Chiang said Kong should remove Lee from his position to avoid him abusing his power and hindering the investigation process, the Central News Agency reported yesterday. Kong last week said he believed Lee was innocent.
Lee's office has the power to investigate irregularities in the financial markets. But the Black Gold Investigation Center of the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office claimed last week that they had found concrete evidence that strongly suggested Lee's likely involvement in the illegal trading of Power Quotient stocks. This was a huge blow to the financial watchdog, on the eve of its first anniversary celebrations.
The evidence included a note -- in Lee's handwriting, according to the center -- to the prime suspect, Lin Ming-da (
The prosecutors' claims infuriated the commission and led to intensifying in-fighting between the two government agencies. The commission on Friday decided to form its own investigating task force, while accusing some of the prosecutors of possible involvement in the scandal.
The commission's task force will investigate employees of the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp, the Securities and Futures Bureau, the Financial Examination Bureau, prosecutors and investigators, as well as their close relatives, to determine whether they were engaged in illegally trading in Power Quotient shares, the commission said.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
RSS