Lee faces illegal-trading rumors

The director-general of the Financial Supervisory Commission's Examination Bureau, Lee Chin-chen (李進誠), was allegedly involved in a stock market scandal and was summoned for questioning by prosecutors on Tuesday.

"The Black Gold Center summoned Lee for questioning, but prosecutors needed more time to ascertain whether he actually was involved in the scandal," Eric Chen (陳瑞仁), a prosecutor at the Black Gold Investigation Center of the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office in charge of the case, told the Taipei Times yesterday.

Chen declined to reveal more details about the investigation.

Lee, who is a prosecutor in the Prosecutors' Office for the Taiwan High Court and an expert on financial crimes, was appointed to the position in January.

The Taipei Prosecutors' Office in January investigated Power Quotient International Co's (勁永國際) inflated revenue figures for last year. Some Chinese-language business newspapers reported on the matter in the same month.

The Taipei Prosecutors' Office and the Black Gold Investigation Center said they had found, at the time the stories made headlines, that there had been a lot of borrowing on the stock market against Power Quotient shares. The borrowers made substantial profits as the company's share value dropped on negative reports in the media.

The Taipei Prosecutors' Office and the Black Gold Investigation Center suspected there was a group illegally profiting from stock movements. The group allegedly consisted of agents of the Investigation Bureau, a couple of reporters and individual stock market investors, and a cooperative investigation was launched.

The prosecutors said that some agents aroused suspicion by leaking the results of their investigations to specific reporters. By the time the stories were published, the individual investors had already borrowed substantial amounts of money from or bought shares of companies under investigation. The members of the group then shared the illegal profits.

Prosecutors said the group had not only allegedly borrowed money illegally from Power Quotient, it also suspiciously traded shares of several companies under investigation.

The prosecutors on April 17 summoned Economic Daily News reporter Chen Ling-hsuan (陳令軒), who wrote the story about Power Quotient inflating its revenue, for questioning and released him on NT300,000 bail. He was also restricted from leaving Taiwan.

Prosecutors on June 23 raided the office and residence of Lin Ming-da (林明達), an individual investor allegedly in charge of the illegal trading.

Taipei prosecutors the same day lodged an application at court for Lin's incarceration, but he was released on bail.

Prosecutors were shocked to find a note at Lin's office allegedly written by Lee Chin-chen, in which he asked Lin to borrow money against Power Quotient's shares on his behalf.

The prosecutors deducted that the official might have become involved with the criminal group, but said that they were still gathering evidence on the matter.

Power Quotient was restricted to cash transactions in March by the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp.

Established in 1997, Power Quotient manufactures and markets computer-memory modules, flash-memory storage devices and peripherals.