The Ministry of Finance decided yesterday to issue a written warning to Jerome Chen (陳建隆), chairman of the First Commercial Bank (第一銀行), who used the bank's client list to garner support for DPP member Charles Chiang (江昭儀).
Chiang is also a banker who is running in an upcoming party election.
"Because he is not a civil servant, he has not violated the banking law," Vice Minister of Finance Sean Chen (
He has not violated the information secrecy act as he has not given the information to third parties, Chen said.
Following discussions with the Ministry of Justice, the finance ministry has however decided to issue a written warning to Chen and imposed a penalty of NT$60,000. The finance ministry will also ask Chen to personally pay NT$432,400 worth of postal fees incurred in the process. Earlier this week, Chen acknowledged that he has campaigned for Chiang, but sought to play down the significance of the blunder after making a formal apology.
"I apologize for the incident and it will never happen again," Chen said on Monday.
He also said that he distributed endorsement letters to bank clients, while dismissing the party primary as a "carnival event."
Chen, 53, was chairman of the Bank of Kaohsiung (
The government owns a 24 percent stake in First Commercial, Taiwan's largest publicly traded commercial bank. One of the bank's board representatives traditionally serves as chairman of First Commercial.
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