British newspaper The Mail on Sunday reported that Prince Charles met with Bruno Wang (汪家興), a Taiwanese fugitive who describes himself as a Chinese philanthropist and donated ￡500,000 (US$683,522) to the prince’s charity, the Prince’s Foundation.
The newspaper reported that Wang is wanted in Taiwan on charges related to money laundering and being a fugitive from justice, allegations he denies, and drew comparisons between Wang and the Russian banker Dmitry Leus.
Investigation and cooperation with foreign authorities have found that Bruno Wang’s father, Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), had stashed proceeds from a scandal involving the procurement of Lafayette frigates in 61 bank accounts, mainly in Switzerland, as well as in accounts owned by his family in banks in about a dozen countries and territories, Ministry of Justice officials have said.
Photo: Chien Li-chung, Taipei Times
Leus was likewise accused of money laundering and made a donation of ￡500,000 to the foundation. His conviction was overturned.
Prince Charles “met at least nine times” with William Bortrick, the alleged fixer at the heart of the claims, who is said to have received thousands of pounds to secure an honor for a Saudi Arabian billionaire and brokered a personal thank you letter from Charles to a Russian donor, the Sunday Times reported.
The Russian banker reportedly received two invitations to private events at Charles’ royal residences in Scotland, allegedly secured by Bortrick. They were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about the donor’s past.
In the summer last year, Charles, 72, and Bortrick, 48, met at the Castle of Mey, the late queen mother’s former home in Caithness, the newspaper reported.
Weeks before the meeting, Bortrick had brokered a six-figure donation to the charity from Leus in exchange for a meeting with the prince, the newspaper reported.
He received a ￡5,000 cut of the donation for “expenses,” it reported.
A spokesperson for Bruno Wang, who lives in the Cayman Islands, said he was never involved in the original Lafayette transaction.
He said: “These 30-year-old accusations in Taiwan against his deceased father are politically motivated and without foundation. When they were made about his father before the Cayman court in 2014, the Honourable Chief Justice Anthony Smellie dismissed them as not only ‘wholly unintelligible,’ but ‘scandalous and vexatious.’”
“Bruno is committed to supporting charitable endeavors that promote art, wellness and social inclusion,” he added.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS