Chiang Chin-liang (江欽良), a prominent businessman in Nantou County, was yesterday released on NT$10 million (US$330,284) bail after being arrested on Thursday in a raid over a financial fraud case.
Prosecutors said they are investigating allegations that Chiang used dummy accounts and applied political pressure to obtain what is deemed an illegal bank loan of more than NT$100 million from a farmers’ cooperative credit union in Nantou’s Caotun Township (草屯).
Chiang, 52, is also alleged to have meddled in the local farmers’ association election earlier this year, trying to get his friends inserted into executive positions, where Chiang was accused of employing assassins to assault a rival candidate.
Photo: Chen Feng-li, Taipei Times
Chiang operates a number of tourism and night market businesses in Nantou, but he has had a checkered past, having served prison terms for murder, robbery, blackmail, and firearms possession.
His criminal past has gotten Chiang in the media limelight, with his alleged ties to major gangs and illegal business operations and reports that he is an influential gangster boss in Nantou.
Chiang reportedly enjoys close relationships with some Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) politicians, including KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義).
Chiang was pictured in the news when he accompanied Wu on a vacation to Bali Island in 2006; their relationship goes back to when Wu was Nantou County commissioner from 1981 to 1989 and continued when Wu was KMT legislator for Nantou County from 2002 to 2009.
When reporters asked Wu yesterday if he was in touch with “his good friend Chiang,” he seemed annoyed and said: “No.”
The allegations against Chiang centered on his use of friends and company staff to take out loans at the farmers’ cooperative credit union, with each getting a loan of more than NT$10 million, despite having a documented annual income of less than NT$100,000, Nantou County head prosecutor Wu Yi-ying (吳怡盈) said.
Investigators’ reports alleged that those receiving the loans were coerced by Chiang and handed the money over to him, Wu said, with the evidence showing that he had applied pressure and used political connections to expedite the approval of these questionable loans.
“Chiang is being investigated in terms of the Agricultural Finance Act [農業金融法] and not on charges of organized crime or related offenses,” Wu said yesterday.
Of the other 34 people detained in Thursday’s raids — including executives of the Caotun Town farmers’ cooperative credit union and Chiang’s employees and associates — most were freed or released on bail yesterday.
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