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.
Twenty-four Republican members of the US House of Representatives yesterday introduced a concurrent resolution calling on the US government to abolish the “one China” policy and restore formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Led by US representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Perry, the resolution calls for not only re-establishing formal relations, but also urges the US Trade Representative to negotiate a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan and for US officials to advocate for Taiwan’s full membership in the UN and other international organizations. In a news release announcing the resolution, Tiffany, who represents a Wisconsin district, called the “one China” policy “outdated, counterproductive
Actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) has “returned home” to Taiwan, and there are no plans to hold a funeral for the TV star who died in Japan from influenza- induced pneumonia, her family said in a statement Wednesday night. The statement was released after local media outlets reported that Barbie Hsu’s ashes were brought back Taiwan on board a private jet, which arrived at Taipei Songshan Airport around 3 p.m. on Wednesday. To the reporters waiting at the airport, the statement issued by the family read “[we] appreciate friends working in the media for waiting in the cold weather.” “She has safely returned home.
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody