Taipei prosecutors yesterday charged KMT Legislator Gary Wang (
Officiating prosecutor Weng Hung-tsai (
The prosecutor claimed that in a land purchase by Far Eastern Silo and Shipping (FESS,
Weng said that Wang had not given a convincing explanation regarding questions raised by the prosecutors' investigation into the repayment.
Weng said he was requesting that Wang be held incommunicado, without even visits from family members, citing fears that he might abscond or conspire with other suspects or witnesses.
The prosecutor issued a much-anticipated subpoena of Wang yesterday morning, and Wang presented himself before prosecutors in the afternoon.
Before being questioned, Wang told the media that he was not worried because, he said, he had not done anything illegal.
In early 1998, FESS bought a 72,000m2 plot of land in Yangmei township, Taiyuan County, for a purchase price which the company maintains was NT$845 million. It developed the land and sold it to state-run Taiwan Development and Trust Corp (台開信託) last November at a price of around NT$1.8 billion.
The prosecutors suspect officials of the two companies collaborated to raise the price of the land artificially. They claim to have been tipped off that FESS in fact only spent some NT$200 million on its initial purchase of the land, much less than the NT$845 million claimed.
The NT$180 million suspected of being paid back to one of Wang's companies is alleged to relate to this initial purchase.
The prosecutors have not subpoenaed the previous owner of the land.
On Thursday, the prosecutor conducted searches of six sites, including offices of Wang's conglomerate. One alleged suspect, Chen Shih-chang (
The prosecutor did not specify what Chen's role was in the case and Wang yesterday told the media that he did not know Chen at all.
Wang, vice chairman of the Rebar Group and chairman of the Eastern Multimedia Group, had earlier denied the allegations of fraud surrounding the deal.
The special secretary to the general manager of FESS and the man who carried out the land deal, Chou Chi-peng (
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