The Taipei District Court yesterday heard a lawsuit by an interior designer against the son of former National Police Admin-istration chief Ding Yuan-chin (丁原進).
The designer, Ko Wen-cheng (柯文正), sued Ding Chao-chi (丁肇基) accusing the latter of failing to pay more than NT$4 million in interior design and decoration fees for his work at the Dings' controversial Vision City (世界山莊) villa.
Ding did not appear in court nor was he represented by an attorney at the hearing.
The dispute came to light earlier this month and led to allegations that the former police force head is living a life of luxury well beyond his means.
Ding's attorney, Chiani Lee (李采霓), said the designer failed to accomplish the agreed-upon tasks or win the Dings' approval for the work that was completed.
"The work had many defects, and my client twice asked them to do it properly, but they failed to meet these demands," Lee said.
Despite the flaws in the work completed, she said, Ding has paid NT$3.24 million of the originally agreed-upon NT$4 million.
"But they changed the project without consulting us and inflated the price to NT$8 million," Lee said.
But Ko told a different story, saying every piece of the work was carried out according to the contract.
"I asked them to approve the work, but they did not do so and just moved in and changed the lock," Ko said.
Taipei County Councilor Chin Chieh-shou (金介壽) appeared outside the court to support Ko. He said many business people offered to provide free furniture to Ding Yuan-jinn when he was in office.
"But they withdrew their offers when Ding stepped down. And that's why the Dings have failed to pay the money," he said.
The Control Yuan last Tuesday started an investigation into Ding's financial affairs and the circumstances surrounding the purchase of his residences.
Ding Yuan-chin was also charged last week by Taipei City Councilors with owing NT$24 million in fines and taxes for gifts he says he used to purchase an upscale villa in the Wenshan District of Taipei City.
Ding is the former head of the National Police Administration and previous chief of the Taipei City Police Headquarters.
Ding claimed on Tuesday that, to buy a house in Vision City worth NT$38 million, he gathered NT$6 million from his only son and borrowed NT$20 million from one of his "good friends."
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