Central Investment Co (中央投資公司) yesterday denied allegations that a high-ranking government official took more than NT$1 billion (US$29.7 million) in bribes during the merger of two financial holding companies.
Wang Hai-ching (汪海清), general manager of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) owned enterprise, expressed regret over the matter, while criticizing the source of the allegations as lacking in professional ethics.
He added that they were baseless and irresponsible allegations made with the aim of diverting public attention from the legal case of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Chen's defense lawyer, Cheng Wen-lung (鄭文龍), said on Monday that a KMT member and high-ranking government official embezzled billions of NT dollars when the party disposed of its stolen assets. Cheng questioned why the Special Investigation Panel (SIP) did not launch an investigation into the matter.
While Cheng did not reveal the identity of the official, Minister of Civil Service Chang Che-chen (張哲琛) on Monday denied that he was the person in question.
Chang allegedly accepted NT$2 billion from Yuanta Securities Finance (元大證金) during its merger with Global Securities Finance Corp (環華證金) when Chang was the head of the KMT's administrative and management department.
Wang yesterday said Chang handled the sale of party assets in accordance with the law and all transactions were completed when the Democratic Progressive Party was in power. Had any illegal dealings been found, people involved would have been charged, he said.
Wang said Chang and all Central Investment employees would be happy to talk to investigators to prove their innocence.
He also urged the media to double check the facts before reporting them and to refrain from dancing to the tune of a few people who make “groundless accusations.”
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift