Detentions made in Jin Wen Group loan scandal case

A Taipei District Court yesterday ruled that a manager of the state-run Central Trust of China Bank (中央信託局) be held incommunicado for allegedly granting an illegal loan to the Jin Wen Group (景文集團).

Prosecutors suspect that Chang Cheng-hung (張正宏), a former assistant manager in the bank's trust department and now a branch manager, granted Chang Wan-li (張萬利), former head of the Jin Win Group, a NT$640 million loan with the knowledge that the latter had inflated the value of the group's property.

Chang Wan-li allegedly used a construction site owned by the Jin Wen Group in Hsinchuang (新莊) City, Taipei County, as a collateral to win approval for the loan.

Prosecutors say the group obtained the construction site with less than NT$300 million by forging transaction records and inflating its value to more than NT$600 million in a conspiracy with a property evaluation company, according to reports in the Chinese language media.

The Central News Agency reported that the site is actually lying vacant and that construction work on it has been suspended for several years.

On the suspicion that officials at the Central Trust of China conspired with Chang Wan-li in granting the loan, prosecutors and investigators on Tuesday raided the bank and took 15 officials in for questioning.

Early yesterday the prosecutors recommended to the court that Chang Cheng-hung be detained. The other 14 were released after questioning.

Of the borrowed NT$640 million, CNA reported, Chang Wan-li misappropriated some NT$425 million. He remains at large overseas.

In addition, Chang Wan-li, the former chairman of the private Jin Wen Institute of Technology (景文技術學院), has been accused of stealing an estimated NT$200 million from the institute in students' school fees and Ministry of Education subsidies, after he experienced financial difficulties because of an investment failure in Vietnam.

Chang is also reported to have borrowed money from institute staff amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.

The financial crisis of the Jin Wen Group came to light last July after Chang wrote rubber checks with a face value of tens of millions of dollars.

Chang's detention came just hours before an early morning fist fight ensued in the legislature over additional accusations related to the school.

On Monday, People First Party lawmaker Diane Lee (李慶安), who was attacked yesterday by alleged gangster Lo Fu-chu (羅福助), insinuated that gangsters or public officials were influencing the investigation of the school.

During that meeting on Monday of the legislature's Education and Culture Committee, the Minister of Education Ovid Tzeng (曾志朗) denied the accusations.

Tzeng said yesterday that any accusations about the wrongdoing of board directors at the Jin Wen Institute of Technology would be investigated in accordance with the law.