Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday denied he or his wife played a role in the corruption scandal involving former Executive Yuan secretary-general Lin Yi-shih (林益世), dismissing accusations that he was involved in the case.
Following accusations that Wu introduced businessman Chen Chi-hsiang (陳啟祥) to Lin, who allegedly accepted NT$63 million (US$2.15 million) from Chen to help secure contracts with China Steel Corp (中鋼) and its subsidiaries, the Chinese-language Next Magazine yesterday claimed Wu’s wife, Tsai Ling-yi (蔡令怡), had made a phone call to a family friend, Wu Men-chung (吳門忠), to complain about their relationship being exposed by the magazine.
Wu Men-chung, a major votes broker for the vice president in his Nantou County hometown, is the father of Chen’s girlfriend’s daughter-in-law.
The magazine claimed that when Wu Den-yih denied having a relationship with Chen last week, Tsai made a call to Wu Men-chung on the same day and said he should have told Wu Den-yih about his family’s relationship with Chen’s girlfriend, Cheng Tsai-mei (程彩梅), before the magazine picked up the story, prompting Wu Men-chung to publicly clarify the issue.
The magazine also claimed that Wu Men-chung’s wife had accepted NT$10 million from Chen.
The vice president yesterday denied the story and insisted his wife never made the telephone call. He also urged the magazine to stop making groundless accusations about him and his family.
“My wife did not call Wu Men-chung last week. If she did, then we would not be able to clarify the situation and the rumors would spread,” he said on the sidelines of an event in Taipei.
Speculations about the vice president’s involvement in the case first surfaced last week when political commentator Hu Chung-hsin (胡忠信) said a high-ranking government official was also involved in the corruption scandal, claiming that “Mr X” introduced Chen to Lin and implying that Mr X was Wu Den-yih.
Next Magazine also linked Wu Den-yih to the case by claiming last week that Lin bragged about his relations with Wu Den-yih when asking for bribes from Chen, saying he was handling all of Wu Den-yih’s matters.
In other news, the vice president also dismissed speculation that he would run for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairmanship now that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) all-time low support rating has prompted calls for him to step down as the party chairman to focus his efforts on his presidential duties.
The vice president also denied a Next Magazine report that he had collaborated with Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) to strengthen the anti-Ma force in the KMT.
“I support the president continuing to serve as KMT chairman. I did not attend Speaker Wang’s banquet with local government heads in May. The magazine is making stories up,” he said.
Ma announced on Wednesday last week that he would seek re-election as KMT chairman next year. Wang, a possible challenger to Ma in the election, has denied having any intention of competing.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS