Outgoing KMT legislative whip Lee Chuan-chia (
It seemed like there was not one day he failed to call news conferences implicating ranking government officials in the alleged influence-peddling scheme involving Zanadau Development Corp.
TAIPEI TIMES FILE PHOTO
Lately, he has shifted his attention to the Kaohsiung City Council where members reportedly elected their independent colleague Chu An-hsiung (
The 43-year-old Lee, who won his second term as a lawmaker through party appointment, asserted that by exposing both scams, he intended to help eradicate the kind of money politics that has gnawed at the nation's wealth and sapped people's confidence in the government.
"Sick and tired of graft and corruption in Taiwan, I have decided to assume the mantle of scandal-buster," he said during a recent interview. "There is no way the country can move forward otherwise."
Last September, he accused Senior Adviser to the President Yu Chen Yueh-ying (
After Liu failed to secure bank loans for Su's cash-strapped company, Su turned to DPP officials for help in a bid to salvage her Zanadau venture, a multi-billion-dollar plan to build a giant shopping mall in Kaohsiung County, according to Lee.
"At least eight DPP heavyweights took bribes of between NT$10 million and NT$30 million from Su after she sought in vain to obtain loans through the China Development Industrial Bank," he said.
Lee singled out Yu Chen for criticism, saying the former Kaohsiung County commissioner, who briefly served as Zanadau president, exploited her post to boost her own wealth.
The lawmaker also urged investigators to probe Yu Chen's son, Interior Minister Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲), who, Lee noted, quickly approved licenses for the Zanadau project after succeeding his mother as Kaohsiung County commissioner.
"Investigators cannot solve the puzzle if they pass over the Yu clan, which played a key role in the rise and fall of the venture," he said.
Denying ulterior motives, Lee said people losing money on the ill-fated project lodged complaints with the KMT caucus about the alleged irregularities.
"Because of my leadership at the caucus, I had access to the materials they supplied. It does not matter who tipped me off as long as the charges are accurate," said Lee whose daily expose of corruption led critics to brand him a rumormonger.
Su, who accused Liu and his aides of bilking NT$10 billion from her, was detained on New Year's Eve for unfairly inflating the land value of the Zanadau mall, amongst other charges.
The businesswoman has shied away from comments on her ties to the Yu clan except to say that she has settled her accounts with Yu Chen.
In the run up to the Kaohsiung mayoral election, Lee made further revelations, claiming that DPP incumbent Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) accepted a NT$4.5 million check from Su during his stint as lawmaker.
Days later, he displayed a copy of Su's bank statement that showed she wired NT$4.5 million to a Taipei Bank account on Nov. 25, 1994, with Hsieh as the payee.
"Hsieh should give a clear account of what the money was for," Lee said, adding he suspected the mayor also took part in the Zanadau affair.
With a masters in Electric Engineering and a PhD in business administration, Lee said his hunches rarely prove to be wrong.
The allegations at one point threw Hsieh's mayoral campaign into disarray as he canceled campaign events on Dec 5, two days before the vote, and traveled to Taipei to check his bank accounts. The mayor explained the money at issue was a back debt owed to him, which had nothing to do with the Zanadau project.
On election day, Hsieh managed to retain his mayoralty by a narrow margin, with sympathetic supporters vowing to besiege Lee's Tainan office to seek revenge on Hsieh's behalf.
Undaunted, some 300 of Lee's supporters amassed outside his office on Dec. 9, chanting slogans in a bid to safeguard their lawmaker.
A clash was avoided after the DPP camp called off the planned demonstration.
"The threatened protest was taken as a provocative act by my constituency as a whole," said Lee, who entered politics seven years ago when he returned from the US to take care of his parents.
After he questioned Hsieh's ties to the business community, the lawmaker said his family members had received phone calls threatening their safety.
"To be honest, I miss my days as an entrepreneur abroad," he said. "As a politician I have no privacy at all, not to mention any enjoyment of life."
In the US, Lee ran his own company and factory. He started his career as a hardware designer and sold his first patent on a motherboard for US$180,000.
He has since warned the nation to brace itself for another Zanadau-like scandal, saying the alleged vote-buying by Kaohsiung City councilors revealed only the tip of the iceberg. "It is contracts for the city's mass rapid transit system that are the real prize contractors are after," Lee said, declining to elaborate.
Industrious and headstrong, the two-term legislator drew mixed views from his fellow colleagues.
KMT lawmaker Cheng Feng-shih (
Hung Hsiu-chu (
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
RSS