Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Ma Yung-cheng (
"I never offered to resign nor did the president ask me to," Ma told a press conference held at the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon. "Besides, it is not my style to give up in the face of adversity. I'm not a quitter."
Ma also denied that he had received a red envelope containing NT$2 million (US$61,671) from Hua Nan Financial Holding Co chairman Lin Ming-cheng (林明成) on his wedding day, adding that he had not received money or gifts from anyone.
Lin yesterday issued a statement dismissing the allegations.
Ma said yesterday that he planned to file a lawsuit against KMT Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) for accusing him of taking money from Lin via a merger between financial institutions.
Ma has filed a defamation lawsuit against noted political commentator Hu Chung-hsin (
The Presidential Office deputy secretary-general made the comments in response to allegations made by Chiu and Hu at separate press conferences earlier yesterday, where they accused Ma of accepting large amounts of money from two financial holding companies.
"We learned from two media commentators that Lin gave Ma NT$2 million at Ma's wedding on Sept. 18, 2002," Hu said.
Hu refused to name the two media commentators.
Later yesterday, Hua Nan Financial issued a statement denying Chiu and Hu's accusations. The statement said that Lin had not given any wedding gift to Ma, and that his position as company chairman had nothing to do with the government official.
Chiu and Hu also accused Ma of meddling in mergers of financial institutions and demanded that he explain whether he had acted on his own or on behalf of President Chen Shui-bian (
Chiu also speculated that Lin had been elected chairman of Hua Nan Financial because of his close relationship with Ma.
Denying Chiu and Hu's claims, Ma yesterday admitted that he had asked former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Chen Che-nan (
Ma said he had requested the meeting to clear up the rumor that the Presidential Office was involved in the competition for operational control of the Sogo Department Store.
"I told them that I had heard some rumors that the Presidential Office was involved in the matter and made it clear that we would never do such a thing, simply because it was a private business deal," Ma said.
He also denied that he had anything to do with bids for operational control of China Development Financial Holding Co, Waterland Financial Holding Co and Fuhwa Financial Holding Co, as these firms fell under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance and had been handled by then finance minister Lin Chuan (林全).
Lin Chuan, who attended Ma's press conference yesterday, said that he had adopted consistent criteria while handling the matter: Whoever owned more stakes in the company was allocated more seats on the board.
Ma yesterday demanded that Chiu produce evidence for his allegation that the Presidential Office had interfered in Chinatrust Financial Holding Co's plan to invest in Mega Financial Holding Co.
Regarding claims of underhanded telephone conversations between Ma and Minister of Finance Joseph Lyu (
Ma also dismissed Chiu's allegation that he had abused his administrative power by using a Presidential Office vehicle to pick up his then girlfriend before their marriage.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not