Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday showed documents that were provided by two Malaysian corporations in the bidding process for the scandal-ridden Taipei Twin Towers project, and defended the city government’s effort to verify the financial credibility and investment plans the developer had provided.
The Malaysian firms — IGB and Mid Valley City — were members of the consortium that won the bid in October last year to develop the two high-rise buildings. The major player in the consortium, Taipei Gateway International Development, is suspected of bribing city officials and councilors, and fabricating the consortium’s financial reports to win the bid.
The cooperation between the city government and the consortium failed after Taipei Gateway International Development was unable furnish a NT$1.89 billion (US$63.7 million) performance bond by the deadline, sparking concerns that the city government had been fooled by the developer because the two Malaysian companies were never the developer’s investment partners.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“These documents provided by IGB during the bidding process were verified by the Malaysian government and examined by our representative office in Malaysia … We did our best to verify the credibility of the investors,” Hau told a press conference at Taipei City Hall.
Taipei City Legal Affairs Commissioner Tsai Li-wen (蔡立文) said his department never changed the criteria for the bidding, and the investment contract stated clearly that the private owners of the land and the three members of the consortium should all follow the contract.
Hau accused Taipei Gateway International Development of damaging the city government’s reputation and causing indefinite delays to the project, and urged prosecutors to unveil the truth as soon as possible.
As the city government plans to hold another bidding process, Hau said the city government would adopt stricter criteria for large-scale projects, and increase the performance bond and other financial requirements from the bidders.
“We need to ensure that the construction firms have the ability to follow the requirements of the contract and prevent them from engaging in illegal acts,” he said.
Prosecutors have detained Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Lai Su-ju (賴素如) on suspicion of accepting bribes from the developer, and identified Taipei City Department of Finance Commissioner Chiu Da-chan (邱大展) as a suspect in their ongoing investigation.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods