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
NO LIVERPOOL TRIP: Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who won a gold medal in the boxing at the Paris Olympics, was embroiled in controversy about her gender at that event Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) will not attend this year’s World Boxing Championships in Liverpool, England, due to a lack of response regarding her sex tests from the organizer, World Boxing. The national boxing association on Monday said that it had submitted all required tests to World Boxing, but had not received a response as of Monday, the departure day for the championships. It said the decision for Lin to skip the championships was made to protect its athletes, ensuring they would not travel to the UK without a guarantee of participation. Lin, who won a gold medal in the women’s 57kg boxing
RESPONSE: The transit sends a message that China’s alignment with other countries would not deter the West from defending freedom of navigation, an academic said Canadian frigate the Ville de Quebec and Australian guided-missile destroyer the Brisbane transited the Taiwan Strait yesterday morning, the first time the two nations have conducted a joint freedom of navigation operation. The Canadian and Australian militaries did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Ministry of National Defense declined to confirm the passage, saying only that Taiwan’s armed forces had deployed surveillance and reconnaissance assets, along with warships and combat aircraft, to safeguard security across the Strait. The two vessels were observed transiting northward along the eastern side of the Taiwan Strait’s median line, with Japan being their most likely destination,
‘NOT ALONE’: A Taiwan Strait war would disrupt global trade routes, and could spark a worldwide crisis, so a powerful US presence is needed as a deterrence, a US senator said US Senator Deb Fischer on Thursday urged her colleagues in the US Congress to deepen Washington’s cooperation with Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific partners to contain the global security threat from China. Fischer and other lawmakers recently returned from an official trip to the Indo-Pacific region, where they toured US military bases in Hawaii and Guam, and visited leaders, including President William Lai (賴清德). The trip underscored the reality that the world is undergoing turmoil, and maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region is crucial to the security interests of the US and its partners, she said. Her visit to Taiwan demonstrated ways the
The US has revoked Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) authorization to freely ship essential gear to its main Chinese chipmaking base, potentially curtailing its production capabilities at that older-generation facility. American officials recently informed TSMC of their decision to end the Taiwanese chipmaker’s so-called validated end user (VEU) status for its Nanjing site. The action mirrors steps the US took to revoke VEU designations for China facilities owned by Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc. The waivers are set to expire in about four months. “TSMC has received notification from the US Government that our VEU authorization for TSMC Nanjing
RSS