A Taipei City councilor has accused one of Taiwan's most prominent former police chiefs of living beyond his means and has demanded an explanation.
New Party Taipei City Councilor Lee Ching-yuan (李慶元) said that Ding Yuan-chin (丁原進) -- former head of the National Police Administration and previous chief of the Taipei City Police Headquarters -- purchased an upscale villa in Taipei's Wenshan District at a price much lower than its market value at the time.
The city councilor alleged that the preferential treatment given to Ding shaved NT$16.1 million off the price of the house.
Lee also claimed that Ding has refused to pay an interior decorator NT$4.7 million in redecoration expenses -- a sum which is now seven months overdue.
While Ding was unavailable to comment, his son, Ding Chao-chi (
Lee, who made the allegation at the city council yesterday morning, said that his own investigation showed that in 1999 Ding paid only half of the market price to buy the 14th and 15th floor of the 16-story Universal Villa (
"While the unit price of the villa cost about NT$350,000 per ping at that time, Ding spent only NT$200,000 per ping. In other words, it cost Ding only NT$21.4 million for the 107-ping, two-story house," Lee said.
If the price had not been lowered it should have cost Ding NT$37.5. million, Lee said, adding that it seemed suspicious for a civil servant, earning a modest salary, to buy a house with NT$21.4 million in cash.
"I call on Ding to offer us an explanation about his source of funding. Did he or did he not accept any preferential treatment from [construction tycoon] Ong Da-ming (
Ong is the CEO of the Hualon Corp (
Ding's son denied that the apartment had been purchased at a lower price because of his father's connections with Ong.
"I don't see the necessity of offering an explanation to the public about how we managed to purchase the house," he said.
Lee said he brought up the issue of unpaid design expenses at the request of Ding's interior designer, Ko Wen-cheng (
Producing detailed documentation of the project yesterday, Ko said that Ding has paid only about NT$3 million out of the total bill of NT$8 million, which was due at the end of last year.
Ding Chao-chi, however, said that the original quote they agreed upon was NT$4.5 million, but that the bill was later inflated to NT$7.8 million.
"We've already paid NT$3 million, but he's been asking us to pay NT$4 million more while the project is not even complete," he said.
According to Ko, the marble floor laid in the living room, kitchen, and restrooms was the most expensive item, accounting for NT$4.3 million. Two imported jacuzzies also carried a price tag of NT$175,000 apiece.
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