South Korean tax officials probing suspicions of tax evasion have raided the offices of several foreign funds that invest billions of dollars here, financial sources said yesterday.
Auditors from the National Tax Service (NTS) have been carrying out sweeping probes into seven foreign funds since Tuesday, reports said.
NIS officials and foreign funds declined to comment on the reported tax audit but financial industry sources confirmed tax officials have seized documents from several foreign groups.
Yonhap news agency said the seven foreign funds reportedly targeted include US-based Newbridge Capital, Carlyle Group and Lone Star as well as the Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC).
The tax probe comes amid growing complaints among foreign investors that South Korea is taking a hostile policy towards them and offshore entities who are based in tax havens and use tax treaties to avoid tax legally.
Seoul introduced new regulations last month under which any shareholder acquiring more than 5 percent of a company here is required to disclose whether they intend to influence the company's management.
All investors also have to declare their legal status and management structure, the name of their largest backers and how they raised the capital for their investment.
Foreign investors say the new requirements are aimed at tightening control on them but South Korean officials say they are to be applied fairly to both domestic and foreign investors, and is aimed at enhancing transparency.
Defenders of the foreign funds say they took on high-risk investments at a time when South Korean investors were unwilling to do so and saved or created thousands of jobs and boosted the country's economy.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
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WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
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