The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate for Taipei County commissioner yesterday offered evidence that his rival had exploited his post as provincial councilor to default on a multi-million dollar loan, while a witness also spoke to reporters to support the accusations.
Luo Wen-chia (
The news conference was a follow-up to comments Luo made in a televised debate on Sunday, in which he said that Chou had exploited his provincial councilor position in 1997 to obtain a NT$12 million (US$449,210) loan from Taiwan Business Bank so he could invest in a ready-to-wear firm, Yungchou Company, without offering any security.
Chou's company had refused to pay off the loan so the bank filed sued Chou. After a series of trials, the court finally ruled that Chou had to pay the bank NT$15million. He has only paid NT$2 million so far.
At his news conference, Luo highlighted what he said were four lies in Chou's comments during the debate, and he asked Chou to explain them.
Luo said the court verdict showed that Chou's wife was the only trustee of the company and Chou's assistant was the company president, so it was untenable for Chou to claim that he was the victim of an insolvency.
Luo noted that Chou had said that he only borrowed NT$8million from the bank, but the amount of Chou's loan was clearly written in the verdict.
Chou had said that he had no way of pressuring the bank since it was a private company. But Luo said the government is one of the bank's shareholders so it was not really a private company as Chou claimed.
The document that Chou showed reporters on Monday to back his claim of innocence was actually a verdict from another court case, Luo said.
When asked to respond to Luo's allegations, Chou said that he would no longer answer Luo's charges because they were all part of Luo's campaign against him.
Later in the day, Lee Kun-yuan (李坤源), a Taiwan Business Bank official who handled Chou's loan, said that he had seen Chou abuse his privilege to force Lee's supervisors to allow him to resolve the NT$15 million debt with just NT$2 million.
Lee and some other bank officials were later punished for not collecting on the debt.
Lee said that he was motivated to come forward with the truth after seeing Chou tell lies.
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