Diane Lee once again accused in Jin-Wen case

DPP Legislator Wang Sing-nan (王幸男) yesterday stepped into the ongoing dispute about who is involved in the Jin-Wen Institute of Technology scandal, suggesting that People First Party (PFP) Legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) had unknowingly sided with a former gangster-connected Jin-Wen board member.

Wang was referring to Chen Hsi-nan (陳錫南), who had contacted Lee once for help after the board was disbanded in March by the Ministry of Education as part of a reform of the private school's operations.

"I'm not saying that Lee has gained anything personally from the Jin-Wen case. The case is in itself a controversial one, and Lee should have been prepared to accept public criticism when she got involved in the case in the first place," Wang said.

However, yesterday Lee reiterated that she has never spoken on behalf of Chen.

Lee said she has only asked the ministry to be careful in the replacement of the board to prevent similar scandals from happening again.

Chen, along with Wu Ching-tang (吳慶堂), was allegedly another creditor of former Jin-Wen chairman Chang Wan-li (張萬利) to whom Chang had sold seats on the board as a way of paying off his debts in April last year. This situation led to a struggle between Wu and Chen to gain control of the board over the past months.

In this process, some legislators were asked to speak on their behalf with the Ministry of Education, which took over the school in August following the exposure of the financial scandal involving Chang's Jin-Wen Group.

However, the role these legislators played has been questioned, with suspicion mounting that some might have become involved with the intention of gaining a seat on the board. This was one of Lee's concerns when she questioned Minister of Education Ovid Tzeng (曾志朗) about the Jin-Wen case during a meeting of the legislature's Education and Culture Committee on March 26.

In this meeting, Tzeng named three legislators who had come to him to discuss the case -- includeding independent legislator Lo Fu-chu (羅福助).

But Tzeng stressed the legislators had done so out of concern for the school's future.

This episode has triggered an exchange of accusations between Lee and Lo about who had become involved in the case over the past two weeks and for what reason.

This also prompted the education ministry to make public on Monday a complete list of legislators who had contacted the ministry to express "concern" about the Jin-Wen case.

During the period the school was taken over and the board was suspended by the ministry, KMT legislators Mu Ming-chu (穆閩珠), Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才), Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and Lin Ming-I (林明義), DPP legislators Chang Chuan-tien (張川田) and Hsu Jung-shu (許榮淑), as well as Lo, approached the ministry to express their concern about the rights of the school's faculty members, information from the ministry shows.

After the board was disbanded in March this year, Mu, Chang Chuan-tien, DPP legislators Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻) and Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) as well as Diane Lee went to the ministry to try and understand the legality of the ministry's decision, based on petitions that they received from their constituents, according to information from the ministry.

Wu, accompanied by Wang at a press conference yesterday, said that Chen used gangsters to threaten him to hand over control of the board, which forced him to seek DPP legislator Hsu Jung-shu's help in bringing the issue to Tzeng's attention.