The Presidential Office yesterday rejected allegations by Next Magazine that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) assisted the Wei (魏) family — Ting Hsin International Group’s (頂新集團) founders — in securing cross-strait trade of their agricultural products, calling the report’s attempt to link Ma to the Wei family “obnoxious news manipulation.”
The magazine’s latest issue, published yesterday, called Ma “the Wei family’s biggest gatekeeper,” who is now trying to sever his ties with the family and its corporation.
The report accused the Ma administration of being a major supporter of Ting Hsin and also the reason why the company, until the recent crisis, could have safely waded through various scandals.
These include a storm involving Taiwan depositary receipts issued by Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding Corp (康師傅控股), a subsidiary of Ting Hsin International Group, in 2009; the family’s controversial purchase of nine units at The Palace, a luxury apartment complex in downtown Taipei, with bank loans covering 99 percent of the purchase; and a string of food scandals.
“Ma played an especially key role in the process of how Ting Hsin acquired the channel to export Taiwan’s agricultural products to China,” the magazine said.
According to the report, Wei Ying-heng (魏應行), the youngest of the four Wei brothers, took Ting Hsin’s CEO Lu Cheng-chang (呂政璋), a former director of Yunlin County’s Agricultural Affairs Bureau, to report to Ma on the cross-strait trade of agricultural products and Ting Hsin’s comprehensive distribution channels in China early last year (the corporation owns more than 1,000 convenience stores and more than 2,000 fast food restaurants in China).
The magazine reported that after the meeting, the president had asked Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji (陳保基) to provide assistance to the Wei family on the matter.
About half a year after the meeting, Chen met China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Deputy Chairman Zheng Lizhong (鄭立中) at Ting Hsin’s headquarters, and about another six months later, the corporation commenced its business in the field, starting from Yunlin’s lettuce and rice this year and aiming to expand to Yunlin’s yams and garlics, it said.
The magazine called Ma’s support “a return of favor” as Wei Ying-chun (魏應充), former chairman of Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品工業), had been a member of a “fan club for Ma and Wu” composed of business group representatives before the 2012 presidential election.
Presidential Office spokesperson Ma Wei-kuo (馬瑋國) called the report “false and ill-intentioned.”
“The office had already clearly stated [on Tuesday] that the Wei family only came to the office once and made a presentation on the corporation’s operation. The visitors did not make any request and the president did not ask [any official] to undertake any task [as the report said he had],” she said.
She denounced the report as spiteful for insinuating the president’s relation with the Weis and said the office deplores such news manipulation.
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