Ministry to investigate bank chairman

A senior finance ministry official said yesterday it will launch an investigation into allegations that First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) chairman Jerome Chen (陳建隆) violated the Taiwan bank information secrecy act.

The charge comes after Chen -- an avid DPP supporter -- used the bank's client list to distribute endorsement letters for Charles Chiang (江昭儀), who served on the bank's board and is running in the DPP's primary for the year-end legislative elections.

Speaking to lawmakers, Vice Minister of Finance Sean Chen (陳沖) said the ministry will investigate Chen's alleged misuse of client information to distribute endorsements of Chiang, a fellow member of the ruling DPP.

But two lawmakers found the news unacceptable and said Jerome Chen should be given the boot.

New Party lawmaker Lai Shyh-bao (賴世葆) said Chen should be replaced for violating the bank information secrecy act, a crime punishable by up to three years in jail. DPP lawmaker Lin Chung-mo (林重謨) also called for Chen's ouster, saying he was an embarrassment to the party.

Chen, meanwhile, didn't deny the allegation, but sought to play down the significance of the blunder after making a formal apology.

``I apologize for the incident and it will never happen again,'' Chen told a legislative panel yesterday. He also admitted that he distributed endorsement letters to bank clients, though he dismissed the party primary as a "carnival event" that shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Chen, 53, was chairman of the Bank of Kaohsiung (高雄銀行) before being named to take over at First Commercial from Chen An-chyr (陳安治), an appointee of the former KMT government.

The government owns a 24 percent controlling stake in First Commercial, Taiwan's largest publicly traded commercial bank, and one of its board representatives traditionally serves as chairman.