The Supreme Administrative Court ruled that People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (
The Supreme Administrative Court said the US$480,000 was unused funds from Soong's campaigns in 1995 and 1997 for Taiwan provincial governor, and that the money counted as his personal property.
"Because Soong put his personal property into his son's accounts in the US, it should be treated as a gift, and therefore Soong needs to pay gift taxes and a fine to the nation," the court ruling said.
Soong told the court that he often paid visits to foreign countries when serving as Taiwan provincial governor from 1995 to 1998. Because he did not attain public funding for the foreign tours, he sent his own money to his son, Soong Chen-yuan (
The ruling said that if Soong thought the money was not a gift for his son, then he should have proved it to the court. But Soong provided little evidence to the court, so it had no choice but to rule against him, the ruling said.
The court said Soong ran for and won the office of Taiwan provincial governor in 1994.
He asked his mother-in-law to send US$150,000 to his son in the US in 1995, and then asked a friend surnamed Lee to deposit US$330,000 in his son's bank account in 1997.
The total was US$480,000, the court added.
Because of Soong's role in the Chung Hsing Bills Finance scandal (
In addition to the lawsuit ruling on Friday, Soong still faces five cases involving unpaid taxes and fines. Those cases have yet to be ruled on by the court.
One of the cases involves allegations that Soong stole money from the KMT and used it to buy US bonds in his son's name. Soong has claimed that the money was to be used as a gift for members of Chiang Kai-shek's (
However, the Ministry of Finance has filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Administrative Court, asking Soong to pay NT$90 million in taxes and fines for his purchases of US bonds, but the case has yet to be resolved.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS