Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday urged his fellow Cabinet members to look into the allegations surrounding the Rebar Asia Pacific Group (力霸亞太企業集團) and punish any personnel guilty of illegal actions as soon as investigation results are available.
"I hereby ask my fellow officials to clarify whether the management of the Rebar Asia Pacific Group stole money from the company, whether it manipulated its own stock prices in the market and whether it relocated the allegedly stolen money to China," Su said. "Somebody must pay for this."
Su made the remarks during the Cabinet meeting yesterday morning.
Su also said that customers of The Chinese Bank (中華銀行), which is a subsidiary of the Rebar Asia Pacific Group, must be protected. Many depositors have concerns about the group's financial problems, and Su said that these customers' legal rights and protecting their money must be a priority.
"We are not protecting the bank. We are protecting those innocent customers," Su said. "Protecting customers is the only guarantee that financial order can be maintained."
He added that an evaluation of The Chinese Bank must be carried out "fairly and accurately," to ascertain what financial problems the bank has.
Su also asked for a detailed investigation into the scandal.
"Who did this? How did this happen? We must ascertain all the details. And I am requesting appropriate punishment for whoever did this to the public," Su said.
Vice Premier Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) admitted that there was still room for the government to improve the manner in which it has handled the entire scandal from the beginning.
"This scandal did not spark chain reactions thanks to the way we handled it. This is good. But, I must say, there is still room for us to make progress, including how we made announcements and the way we comforted the public," Tsai said.
At a separate press conference late yesterday afternoon, Tsai reiterated that the government would work to fix the problem.
"At the moment, the financial aid to The Chinese Bank from the government is almost used up. We will begin to look for help from local banks," she said. "As for the bank itself, we will begin the evaluation process as soon as possible and look for potential buyers."
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday criticized the government, calling it "incompetent" in preventing Rebar Group Chairman Wang You-theng (王又曾) from walking away with a fortune from the bank.
The caucus urged Su to apologize to the public and punish Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Shih Jun-ji (施俊吉) and Minister of Finance Ho Chih-chin (何志欽).
KMT caucus whip Tsai Chin-lung (蔡錦隆) told a press conference that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was trying to shift the responsibility of the matter to the opposition by asking the KMT to call back Wang, who was also a member of the KMT's Central Standing Committee.
"They [the DPP government] hold the reins of government. They have the authority, but they failed to effectively manage [the Rebar Group]. Instead, they tried to shift their responsibility to the opposition ... asking the opposition to catch the criminal [Wang] is the biggest joke of the century," Tsai said.
The caucus questioned why a bank run had happened if the FSC had kept the bank under observation for the past five years and the Bureau of Investigation had previously found problematic financial dealings between the group and the bank.
The DPP, on the other hand, urged the judiciary to investigate whether Wang had funded the KMT during its campaign for last month's mayoral elections.
Director of the DPP's Department of Culture and Information Super Meng (孟義超) told a separate conference that KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) should be responsible for extraditing Wang from China since Wang was once the party's Central Standing Committee member.
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