The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) is looking into a 2015 property sale by CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控), with Taipei prosecutors detaining the company’s former chief financial officer Perry Chang (張明田) and his brother, Chang Ming-jen (張明人), FSC Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said yesterday.
“We will decide whether to take action once the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office finishes its investigation. We also want to know if CTBC breached some regulations that we had failed to detect before,” Koo told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei.
The commission has given prosecutors documents related to CTBC’s sale of one property in Tainan in 2012 and another in 2015 involving its old Taipei headquarters, Koo said.
Prosecutors and investigators on Monday questioned 28 people, including Chang; his brother; his brother’s wife, surnamed Wu (巫); two CTBC Bank (中國信託銀行) employees surnamed Chen (陳) and Ko (柯); as well as Riant Capital chairman Aaron Chan (詹偉立); and Continental Development Corp (大陸建設) chairman Chang Liang-chi (張良吉), the Chinese-language Apple Daily News reported on Wednesday.
Prosecutors have detained Perry Chang brothers for allegedly profiteering from the sale of the company’s old headquarters in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義), the Chinese-language United Daily News reported.
Wu and Chan were released on bail of NT$1 million (US$32,178) each, the reports said.
The building was sold for NT$15.1 billion in 2015 to Grand River Development Ltd (碩河開發), a firm owned by Continental Holdings Corp (欣陸投控) and private equity investment firm Riant Capital Ltd (子樂投資), which has raised prosecutors’ eyebrows, as the price was much lower than the NT$21.5 billion the holding company set in 2012, the reports said.
The reports quoted prosecutors as saying that Perry Chang, who was in charge of the deal, is suspected of breach of trust and contravening the Financial Holding Company Act (金融控股公司法).
CTBC on Wednesday defended the property transaction, saying it slashed the price to NT$15.1 billion after two previous failed bids in light of a bearish market and a dispute over the preservation of Novel Hall (新舞台) adjacent to the building.
After the theater was designated in 2013 a cultural heritage site by the Taipei City Government, bidders were less willing to tender for the property as they would be required to re-establish the hall afterward, CTBC said in a statement.
As a result, CTBC said it followed the advice of appraisal companies to lower the price, which was approved by the company’s board of directors, it said.
This story has been modified since it was first published to avoid any inconvenience caused to Continental Holdings Corp.
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