Eight suitcases full of US dollars in cash alleged to be important evidence in a libel case brought by former president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) wife Tseng Wen-hui (曾文惠), actually contained money purchased by local banks for business purposes, Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau officials have confirmed.
The officials were responding to demands by PFP Legislator Pang Chien-kuo (龐建國) to know where the suitcases of cash, the existence of which was revealed last week, came from and for what purpose.
Tseng won a libel case last year against Elmer Feng (馮滬祥) and Hsieh Chi-ta (謝啟大), both former New Party lawmakers, and Tai Chi (戴錡), a senior member of the party, after they accused her of taking 54 suitcases stuffed with money to the US after the 2000 presidential election.
A week ago, Chou Wu-sha (周無奢) director of the bureau's third department, during a meeting of the legislature's Judiciary Committee, told Pang and other lawmakers that instead of the 54 suitcases which Feng, Hsieh and Tai alleged, the bureau actually had possessed "eight suitcases full of US dollars in cash" which were held as evidence in the libel case but were all returned by the bureau to the US-based bank, where the money was supposed to be deposited.
The "US-based bank" was confirmed to be the Bank of America, Pang said.
However, at the meeting last week, Chou declined to answer any further questions, including who owned the money, how much money was in the suitcases, from which US bank the money came and when it was returned. The committee then asked bureau officials to come back with answers within a week.
"We had a closed-door meeting this morning," Pang said yesterday. "They said that the total amount in the eight suitcases was US$69,926,000 and that it was purchased by nine domestic banks for regular cash transactions between banks."
According to Pang, the bureau's officials told him that this money was held by the bureau for investigation because the date when the money was shipped to Taiwan -- March 22, 2000 -- was quite sensitive as it was only three days after Tseng was alleged to have flown to New York with US$85 million in cash.
However, agents from the bureau finally realized that the US$69,926,000 they held was actually purchased by nine local banks, including TaipeiBank (台北銀行), the Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行), the Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託商業銀行), the International Commercial Bank of China (中國商銀), the Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行), the Taichung Commercial Bank (台中銀行), the Taishin International Bank's (台新銀行), the Taiwan Business Bank (台灣中小企銀) and the Union Bank of Taiwan (聯邦銀行), for business purposes.
As a result, when the libel case was closed on Dec. 12 last year, the bureau immediately returned the money to the Bank of America's Taipei branches since the money was not related to the case at all.
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