Central Investment Co (中央投資公司) said yesterday it would sue Yuanta Securities Finance (元大證金) chief operating officer Michael Ma (馬維辰) for alleging that former chairman of the company, Chang Che-chen (張哲琛), had asked for bribes during negotiations for the purchase of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-owned enterprise.
The holding company was the KMT’s largest asset following the sales of five other assets — its Policy Research and Development Department, three media outlets and its former headquarters — when President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was party chairman.
Next Magazine reported that Michael Ma had acknowledged to prosecutors that Chang, who has served as head of the party’s administrative and management department, asked for a NT$2 billion (US$59 million) commission fee from the NT$16 billion purchase plan of the company’s shareholdings.
Wang Hai-ching (汪海清), general manager of Central Investment Co, said yesterday that the allegations had damaged the reputation of both the company and Chang, and said it would file a lawsuit against Michael Ma.
Lin Yong-ruei (林永瑞), head of the KMT’s administration and management department, said the sale of the enterprise was divided between shareholdings and real estate, adding that the KMT had held a public bidding for both since December.
Four companies had expressed interest, but none won because all were willing to purchase both shareholdings and real estate.
KMT estimates show that the net worth of the company was about NT$20 billion. Lin said the party would hold a second round of public bidding later this year. KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) has vowed to sell the holding company.
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