A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker who supports tougher restrictions on pawnshop lending practices confirmed yesterday that he received threatening telephone calls on the matter earlier this year.
Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) said threats were made by pawnshop operators to his office telephone number and his private cellphone after he raised a proposal in May to cap pawnshop interest rates at 36 percent annually.
Laws governing pawnshops currently limit annual interest rates to 48 percent and monthly rates to 4 percent. The rate, set in 2001, has been called excessive, and is more than double the rate credit card providers are allowed to charge.
The Pawn Shop Management Act (當舖業法) also includes provisions allowing operators to charge an additional 5 percent fee on amounts borrowed.
After proposing the cap, Huang said he began receiving telephone calls saying: “Do you want to run again for election?” and “How could you bring up such a proposal?”
“The calls I received personally were still ‘polite,’ but the ones my legislative office took were not so nice,” he told the legislature.
Although Huang has kept a low profile, DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-chin (葉宜津) told Chinese-language Next Magazine that as many as 33 lawmakers may have received bribes from pawnshops in 2001.
Investigators have said they are aware of the allegations, but could not comment publicly because this was an ongoing case. A source told the Central News Agency -yesterday that investigators searched a number of pawnshops in a nationwide sweep on Oct. 21.
The search also covered documents stored in the legislature and functionaries at the nation’s highest decision-making body.
Next Magazine also alleged that lawmakers across party lines initially agreed to revise the act in March 2001, after the government said interest rates should be capped at 20 percent.
Led by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chang Ming-hsiung (張明雄) and DPP Legislator Chang Ching-fang (張清芳), lawmakers and 31 other cosignatories originally agreed they would gradually cut the rate down to 24 percent over three years.
However, in the final version passed by the legislature, the interest rate had jumped back up to 48 percent, sparking accusations that some lawmakers had received millions of dollars in bribes from pawnshop operators.
The magazine claimed that following the revision, pawnshop owners gathered in Taichung ,where they pooled up to NT$18 million (US$594,000) in payments for lawmakers, with legislators Chang Ming-hsiung and Chang Ching-fang allegedly receiving NT$4 million and NT$2 million respectively.
One of the facilitators of the deal, the magazine alleged, was Ruan Shen (阮森), a minor official in the legislature who was believed to be charge of distributing the funds. It was not immediately clear whether she was the same official questioned by prosecutors last month.
Yeh, who stands by the allegations, said she had evidence of the incident that incriminates both KMT and DPP lawmakers and that she would file a lawsuit in the near future.
However, KMT Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), one of the lawmakers listed by Next Magazine as being a cosignatory of the proposal, said she would not discount the possibility of filing charges against the magazine.
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