President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will testify before court if he is summoned for questioning over allegations that he received illicit political donations, Presidential Office spokesman Charles Chen (陳以信) said yesterday.
Ma has repeatedly denied the allegations and said he is confident of withstanding even the closest scrutiny, Chen said.
“People are obliged to take the stand, if necessary, and of course President Ma would cooperate with the investigation,” he said.
Photo: Chien Jung-feng, Taipei Times
Supreme Court Prosecutors’ Office Prosecutor-General Yen Da-ho (顏大和) on Wednesday said the need to question Ma would be contingent on what prosecutors discover during their investigation.
The Special Investigation Division (SID) in December last year began to investigate allegations by radio host Clara Chou (周玉蔻) that Ma accepted an off-the-book donation of NT$200 million (US$6.3 million) from Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際) during his re-election campaign in 2012 and separate allegations by political commentator Chen Min-feng (陳敏鳳) that at least 12 telecommunications and electronics magnates clandestinely donated a total of NT$200 million to Ma in 2007.
Pundits and opposition politicians accused Ma of being a “guardian angel” for Ting Hsin when the company was under fire following food scandals last year, because he had received large political donations from it.
“It’s not a problem of the possibility [of Ma being questioned] being excluded or not,” Yen said, in response to media inquiries, after Presidential Office Director Kang Bing-cheng (康炳政), Taiwan Lottery Co (台灣彩券) chairman Hsueh Hsiang-chuan (薛香川), Helm Technology (翰門企業) chairman Ni Chi-hsi (倪集熙) and former New Micropore (新長豐) chairman Wang Kung-chan (王公展) were questioned by the SID.
All four were released after questioning on Wednesday.
Political commentator Yao Li-ming (姚立明) alleged that illicit donations offered to Ma at a dinner in 2007 were handed to Kang. Yao described Kang, who he said has worked for Ma since 1984, as “a treasurer for Ma” and the president’s close confidant.
Several people have been questioned over the allegations, including Taiwan Memory Co (台灣記憶體公司) chairman John Hsuan (宣明智), senior Ting Hsin executive Wei Ying-chun (魏應充), Siliconware Precision Industries (矽品精密) chairman Bough Lin (林文伯), former People First Party legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (劉文雄), then-First International Telecom Corp (大眾電信) president Charlie Wu (吳清源) and former Chinese National Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文).
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS