A political money scandal and surprising results in recent mayoral elections have hurt Taiwan's governing DPP while giving the KMT new hope of retaking the presidency in the next elections, in 2004.
The highly complex campaign finance scandal has involved politicians from both of Taiwan's parties, but it is centered in southern Taiwan, a bastion of the DPP. A prominent resort developer has told prosecutors that she distributed tens of millions of dollars to politicians and their fund-raisers, prompting Taiwanese investigators to begin interviewing fund-raisers and, in some cases, temporarily detaining them.
Su Hui-chen (蘇惠珍), the controlling shareholder of the Zanadau Development Corp, said in an interview that she had made zero-interest campaign loans to roughly 20 politicians, divided fairly equally between the two parties.
The politicians signed postdated checks to promise that they would repay the loans, she said. She declined to name the politicians.
But while the KMT politicians' checks cleared recently when she deposited them, checks from politicians in the less affluent DPP have bounced, and they still owe NT$6 million to NT$8.5 million, she said.
Su said that in the late 1990s, when the KMT was still in power, she had separately paid nearly NT$30 million in commissions to a political "broker" with links to the KMT and its financiers. The payments were made, she said, in the hope that party officials would use their influence to compel a government-controlled bank to invest NT$315 million in loans and equity for Zanadau's main project, the construction of an indoor skiing resort near Kaohsiung.
She acknowledged that she did not know how much of the money actually ended up reaching the KMT. But she said she had been encouraged by people close to the party to talk to the broker, without actually being told to pay him. With the broker's help, she added, she played regular games of mah-jong with many politicians from both major parties.
Taiwan law does not ban large contributions to politicians, provided they do not involve a commitment by the politician to take specific corrupt actions. But there is a political stigma attached to big contributions, which seldom become public. Su said she was publicizing her difficulties partly in the hope that she would get her money back and partly in the hope that public attention would help her find a buyer for the ski resort, where construction stopped at an early stage because the needed loan was never obtained.
The broker, Lee Ming-tseh (李明哲), is one of the fund-raisers detained by the police pending the outcome of an investigation. His lawyer, Du Ying-ta (杜英達), declined comment.
Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄), a senior DPP legislator not implicated in the scandal, said it could spread further, because many politicians in southern Taiwan, primarily advocates of Taiwanese independence and often members of his party, had bought stock in Zanadau. But he contended that the scandal posed a greater threat to the KMT, because more money was involved in the attempt to obtain the bank loan.
The KMT has splintered over the last three years, however, and many of the fund-raisers named by Su are no longer active in what remains of the party. "We are clean, we do not accept money," said Lee Chuan-chiao (
Su herself said she had become more wary of dealing with brokers. She now has a large lion-shaped ring of green jade on the ring finger of her left hand to ward off evil. On the pinkie of her right hand she wears a large yellow jade stone set in diamonds, a traditional symbol worn by rich people to protect themselves from swindles.
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