Allegations that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his campaign team received an off-the-books political donation from Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) continued yesterday as media personality Clara Chou (周玉蔻), in a new revelation, accused the Ma administration of being Ting Hsin’s gatekeeper and identifying Ma himself as the person who had received a NT$200 million (US$6.34 million) donation from the company.
Chou said Ma had received the secret donation from Ting Hsin through a confidant and took it to be within legal boundaries for campaign fund-raising.
He might have thought that as the money was used solely for campaign activities and did not end up in his pocket, it was not corruption, Chou said, but added that the move showed seriously flawed moral integrity.
Photo: CNA
Chou wrote an open letter to Ma on Facebook on Monday, naming Benny Hu (胡定吾), Ma’s friend and a board member of Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFCC, 台北金融大樓), the firm that operates Taipei 101, as a key person involved in the donation, suggesting that the president have a “long conversation” with him.
Later the same day, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) filed a lawsuit against Chou for claiming that the KMT received a secret NT$200 million donation from Ting Hsin.
The Presidential Office late on Monday evening released a statement denying the accusations and demanding that Chou provide proof rather than making allegations, saying it suspected that Chou used the term “Ma’s team” to shun legal responsibility.
Photo: Chang Hsiao-Ti, Taipei Times
In response, Chou published an article yesterday directly identifying “Ma’s team” with the president himself.
“Hu is the top aide of the Wei (魏) family, which owns Ting Hsin; Ma is Hu’s guardian angel [“men shen (門神)”]; the Ma administration then became Ting Hsin’s gatekeeper,” Chou said in the article.
She said that according to a “reliable source,” Ma knew about the donation and that Hu was the go-between for Ma and Ting Hsin who wore “white gloves” — referring to a middleman who launders money behind a legitimate front, trusted by both parties.
She also accused Ma, the head of the team, of receiving the clandestine donation.
In the article, Chou said that Ma once said “the money was for the election; it was public expenditure, not corruption.”
However, this was self-hypnosis, Chou said, adding that Ma’s team was referring to Ma himself, and that Ma believed that if both Ting Hsin and those within his team denied a donation had been received nothing could be exposed.
Chou called Monday’s Presidential Office statement “dodgy” and talk of investigating in accordance with the law without mercy “empty talk and self-deception” if Ma does not initiate an investigation.
“How do you investigate in accordance with the law when neither the president nor the judicial system have done anything?” she said, calling on Ma to explain the matter and take the initiative to begin an investigation.
“As far as I know, these off-the-books donations have firewalls built in” that make them beyond legal reach, Chou said.
Chou said she was questioning Ma’s “moral integrity” and called on the president to clarify the issue.
Later yesterday, Presidential Office spokesperson Ma Wei-kuo (馬瑋國), in response to Chou’s new allegations, accused her of “distorting the facts and making malign accusations,” and said that while the president has always respected freedom of speech, it is regretful that Chou has continued to defame the president with false allegations.
The president would not exclude the possibility of taking legal action to defend the reputation of his office, the spokesperson said.
Additional reporting by Wang Yu-chung
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
MASSIVE LOSS: If the next recall votes also fail, it would signal that the administration of President William Lai would continue to face strong resistance within the legislature The results of recall votes yesterday dealt a blow to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) efforts to overturn the opposition-controlled legislature, as all 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers survived the recall bids. Backed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) DPP, civic groups led the recall drive, seeking to remove 31 out of 39 KMT lawmakers from the 113-seat legislature, in which the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) together hold a majority with 62 seats, while the DPP holds 51 seats. The scale of the recall elections was unprecedented, with another seven KMT lawmakers facing similar votes on Aug. 23. For a
Taiwan must invest in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to keep abreast of the next technological leap toward automation, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said at the luanch ceremony of Taiwan AI and Robots Alliance yesterday. The world is on the cusp of a new industrial revolution centered on AI and robotics, which would likely lead to a thorough transformation of human society, she told an event marking the establishment of a national AI and robotics alliance in Taipei. The arrival of the next industrial revolution could be a matter of years, she said. The pace of automation in the global economy can
All 24 lawmakers of the main opposition Chinese Nationalists Party (KMT) on Saturday survived historical nationwide recall elections, ensuring that the KMT along with Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers will maintain opposition control of the legislature. Recall votes against all 24 KMT lawmakers as well as Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) and KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) failed to pass, according to Central Election Commission (CEC) figures. In only six of the 24 recall votes did the ballots cast in favor of the recall even meet the threshold of 25 percent of eligible voters needed for the recall to pass,