The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday continued to pressure President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) over what it said were illegal connections with a financial holding company and inappropriate dealings in a bank merger.
For a second consecutive day, DPP spokespeople and politicians called press conferences and disclosed information they had obtained to show that Ma had failed to avoid a conflict of interest in the merger of Fubon Bank (富邦銀行) and Taipei Bank (台北銀行) when he was Taipei mayor in 2002.
Fubon paid US$2.5 billion to acquire Taipei Bank in August 2002 during the first of Ma’s two terms as mayor.
Photo: CNA
The DPP’s move comes in the wake of allegations by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) that DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) profiteered from Yu Chang Biologics Co (宇昌生技股份有限公司), now known as TaiMed Biologics Co (中裕新藥股份有限公司), when she served as vice premier between 2006 and 2007.
The DPP said on Monday that Ma had accepted a NT$15 million (US$495,000) political donation from Fubon in either 2004 or 2008 and had met the bank’s executives on as many as six occasions before, during and after the merger in 2002 and 2003.
Ma denies both allegations and said he had only two meetings with the executives and they all took place after the merger.
Citing a document from the Taipei City Government’s Department of Finance, which was marked “urgent” and “top secret,” and the minutes of a Taipei Bank board meeting on Aug. 8, 2002, DPP spokesperson Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said that Ma’s “hasty” approval of the merger in one day was “suspicious.”
The approval of the merger was unprecedented because the document passed over the desks of nine officials — from the section chief to then-Taipei mayor Ma — in less than 24 hours, Chuang said.
“What was the hurry to get it done before the December [2002] mayoral election?” he asked.
The two banks signed the merger on Sept. 8, 2004, which means Ma’s meetings with Fubon executives were inappropriate for an elected official, he said.
The KMT has questioned Tsai’s integrity, saying she classified a document on the formation of Yu Chang as “secret” and approved government funding for a company of which she later serve as chairperson, Chuang said.
“So why did Ma approve the merger in one day and associate with people he should not have associated with?” he asked.
“The KMT’s scrutinizing of Tsai and [its defense of] Ma is an obvious double standard,” Chuang said.
In a newspaper ad published yesterday, the DPP legislative caucus cited four media stories between 2002 and 2003 that it said put Ma’s integrity over the merger in question.
The ad asked Ma why Fubon Bank, with total assets of NT$155.7 billion, was able to merge with the much larger Taipei Bank, which had total assets of NT$663.5 billion, and why the Taipei City -Government received only two of 11 seats on Fubon’s board, while the bank had seven.
The city government under Ma undervalued Taipei Bank and the former bank’s value was NT$6 -billion more than the city -government had calculated, DPP legislative candidate Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏) said.
Taipei City Finance Department Commissioner Chiu Da-chan (邱大展) said Fubon Bank won the merger case with the highest bid among five companies, at NT$36 per share.
Then-Taipei Bank chairman Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井), who is currently a KMT legislative candidate, was quoted as saying in 2003 that the merger was “flawed” and that Taipei Bank should not have been the one to be merged, the ad said.
KMT Legislator Fei Hung-tai (費鴻泰), who served as vice speaker of the Taipei City Council in 2002, also questioned why the merger was never discussed in the city council, the ad said.
Chien and DPP Legislator Lee Chien-chang (李建昌) also accused Ma of abusing his power as mayor by selling 44 Taipei Bank properties to Fubon at prices much lower than market rates in August 2003.
For example, land at Taipei Bank’s Guting branch was sold for its 1977 purchase price, Chien said, adding that it was “beyond imagination that Taipei Bank did not go through an asset restructuring process before the merger deal.”
Ma also unilaterally designated Fubon as Taipei City Government’s partner to be in charge of all city funds and Goldman Sachs Taiwan as the consultant for the merger with executive orders, Lee said.
Ma’s re-election campaign team also went on the offensive yesterday and accused the DPP of “distorting the truth” and ignoring Ma’s explanations for election gains. It also urged the DPP to stop its “smear campaign.”
Ma campaign spokesman Yin Wei (殷瑋) dismissed Chuang’s claims that Ma had a private meeting with Fubon Financial chairman Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) prior to the merging of Fubon Bank and Taipei Bank on Aug. 8, 2002, and said that Ma had only met Fubon executives twice, rather than five times, as claimed by the DPP, adding that the meetings all took place after the merger.
Ma on Monday said his two meetings with Fubon executives took place on Sept. 16, 2002, and Aug. 11, 2003, and the meetings did not touch upon issues related to the merger or other municipal affairs.
“President Ma has explained the meetings with Fubon executives clearly, but the DPP intentionally distorted media reports against the president,” Yin said at campaign headquarters.
“We urge the DPP to stop manipulating the issue as a campaign tactic,” Yin said.
Yin added the camp would file a lawsuit against the DPP today for making false accusations against Ma with intentions to make Ma lose the presidential election, and therefore violating the Presidential and Election and Recall Act (選舉罷免法).
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
RSS