The uproar over the Zanadau scandal raged on yesterday as Senior Adviser to the President Yu Chen Yueh-ying (
Citing her poor health, Yu Chen said from a wheelchair she could not recall why she asked main Zanadau shareholder Su Hui-chen (
Yu Chen, 77, mother of Interior Minister Yu Cheng-hsien (
PHOTO: CNA
With her legislator son and a lawyer at her side, Yu Chen told a news conference in a Kaohsiung hotel that she had never laid eyes on the Zanadau stocks that Su purchased on her behalf.
The brief partnership between Yu Chen and Su was nominal as Yu Chen withdrew from the company soon afterward, according to Yu Chen's lawyer.
Su has blamed her financial predicament partly on Yu Chen's exit, which she said triggered a domino effect among shareholders bailing on the project.
Su has admitted issuing a NT$4.5 million check, with then-DPP lawmaker Hsieh as payee, at Yu Chen's request in 1994.
Pre-election storm
The check raised a storm in the run-up to Saturday's Kaohsiung mayoral election as rival camps suspected Hsieh, the DPP incumbent, also had irregular deals with Su.
Yu Chen said the disputed check was part of debt payments Su owed her.
"Senile and ill, I no longer remember why I made her issue the check to Hsieh," Yu Chen said. She added that she suffers hypertension and has to go to the hospital on a weekly basis.
Her lawyer confirmed that Su borrowed over NT$96 million from Yu Chen to pay the construction costs for a group of apartment buildings in Kaohsiung years earlier.
Su, while denying any ties to Hsieh, called the money at issue "inauspicious" and suggested its receiver give it up, declining to elaborate.
On Monday Su charged that a lot of her money found its way into the Yu family's pockets.
But Yu Chen maintains that she never took any dubious money.
"I'd rather die than compromise my integrity," she said.
Her lawmaker son said it is impossible for his mother to remember every detail of the transactions she has processed over the years.
"But she [Yu Chen] did owe Hsieh some money in 1994 so she made Su pay the debt as part of an effort to settle accounts," Yu Jane-daw said.
Yu family ties
At a separate news conference in Kaohsiung, Su said she does not want to comment on her financial ties with the Yu family unless they make malicious charges against her.
The businesswoman, however, continued to accuse China Development Industrial Asset Management Corp Chairman Beny Hu (胡定吾) of breach of trust and other financial misdeeds that scuttled her Zanadau project.
She played a 1997 videotape that showed Hu, then president of China Development Industrial Bank, praising the venture as both innovative and promising at its groundbreaking ceremony.
Su and her partners had planed to build an 11-hectare shopping mall in Kaohsiung County that would feature a man-made ski-playground, among other exotic facilities.
"How could Hu backpedal and deny the project of bank loans he promised to help secure," she said.
Lawsuit
Su vowed to join hands with other shareholders and sue Hu for breach of trust with a damage claim of more than NT$10 billion.
She tearfully urged President Chen Shui-bian (
In Taipei, Hu said later in the day that Su is welcome to take legal action against him. He defended his refusal to arrange the loans, saying it is common for bankers to alter their opinions of investment plans.
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