Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) yesterday said the City’s Department of Government Ethics is looking into two land development cases approved under former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) administration, as city councilors have raised speculation about Ko allegedly allowing some companies to profit.
The Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday reported that the Ko administration had allowed the floor area ratio of Core Pacific City Co (京華城), a shopping mall in Songshan District (松山), to increase from 392 percent to 840 percent.
Core Pacific Group (威京集團) was suspected of profiting from the increased floor area ration, it said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
It also reported that the Ko administration in 2021 had allowed Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽) to win the bid for a 50-year surface rights to plot T17 and T18 in the Beitou Shilin Science Park (北投士林科技園區) without needing an investment plan.
As the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), of which Ko is founder and chairperson, allowed former Shin Kong Life Insurance Co vice president Cynthia Wu (吳欣盈), who is the granddaughter of Shin Kong Group founder Wu Ho-su (吳火獅), to fill a legislative seat vacancy the following year, the Ko administration was suspected of aiding the company, it said.
Democratic Progressive Party and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) city councilors have been gathering signatures to propose the establishment of a special investigation team to look into the cases, and they plan to propose it on Wednesday, the report said.
Chiang said the Department of Government Ethics has already begun investigating the two cases, and the city government would “do whatever is necessary” if problems are uncovered.
“We will not treat them wrongly, if they are innocent, nor let them off easily if they are not,” he said.
Meanwhile, the TPP Taipei City Council caucus yesterday issued a news release saying the party holds a rational, scientific and practical attitude in facing and solving problems, so it supports the city council forming an investigation team to transparently look into the cases.
It said the city government should publicize all related meeting minutes and have specialists and academics review them, along with another case involving Taiwan Intelligent Fiber Optic Network Consortium (TAIFO, 台灣智慧光網).
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
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
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