Taipei prosecutors yesterday searched offices in Taipei 101 and Hung Kuo Real Estate Development Corp as part of a fraud investigation involving former Taipei 101 chairman Lin Hong-ming (林鴻明).
After Lin was taken into custody on fraud charges by the Taipei District Court on Sept. 27, Taipei 101 management immediately announced Lin’s position as chairman had been terminated. Lin remains vice chairman of Hung Kuo.
Prosecutors said they suspected the vice general manager of Hung Kuo, Lin Nan-tsung (林南聰), was involved in the alleged fraud. As one of Lin Hong-ming’s closest aides, Lin Nan-tsung may have helped his boss use fraudulent practices to transfer funds and hollow out company assets, prosecutors said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
They raided Lin Nan-tsung’s residence and his office at Hung Kuo and summoned him for questioning.
Lin Hong-ming’s office in Taipei 101 was also searched, prosecutors said.
Lin Hong-ming is the owner of Jin Shang Chang Development Co, which took out corporate loans of NT$1.8 billion (US$60 million) from China United Trust and Investment Corp in 1999 for property development dealings, prosecutors said.
At the time, Lin Hong-ming put up several tracts of land in Tamsui (淡水), in what is now part of New Taipei City (新北市), as collateral for the loans, but the loans were not paid back.
To offload the bad debt, China United Trust and Investment sold the debt to several land development and construction firms.
However, Jin Shang Chang did not report the bad debt on its financial statements and Lin Hong-ming is suspected of hollowing out the assets of his company and violating the Securities and Exchange Act (證券交易法).
Jin Shang Chang’s General manager Chen Chi-tsang (陳祈蒼) and chief financial officer Tung Tsui-hua (董翠華) have also detained by judges in the case.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS