The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday said it would ask the Singapore Supreme Court to carry out a compulsory acquisition of diplomatic broker Ching Chi-ju’s (金紀玖) assets after the court yesterday ruled that Taiwan can claim US$29.8 million from him in the high-profile Papua New Guinea diplomatic fraud case.
In 2006, Ching, a Republic of China national who holds a US passport, and Wu Shih-tsai (吳思材), a Singaporean national, acted as middlemen in a failed attempt to seek diplomatic ties with Papua New Guinea initiated by the then-Democratic Progressive Party government.
Under the deal, the ministry remitted US$30 million into a Singapore bank account opened by Ching and Wu in September 2006, with US$200,000 to be used as spending money by the duo.
The DPP government decided to abandon the talks after they fell through in October 2006 and Ching was to return the money in December 2006, but Ching went missing and so did the money.
In 2008, the ministry filed a complaint against Ching and Wu with Singapore’s Supreme Court, claiming the two had used the money for their own purposes rather than on the establishment of diplomatic relations with Papua New Guinea.
In December last year, the Singapore High Court ruled in favor of Taiwan and demanded that Ching return US$29.8 million.
Although Ching could file an appeal against the latest ruling, the court gave Taiwan the right to impound his assets.
“Despite the appeal clause, the foreign ministry will demand that the court seize [Ching’s] assets in accordance with Singaporean law as soon as possible,” said Chen Shou-han (陳首瀚), section chief of the ministry’s Department of Treaty and Legal Affairs, who attended the lawsuit on behalf of the ministry.
“The foreign ministy’s position on the matter is clear. We will make every effort to retrieve the money, not only from Singapore, but from any other countries where the money was placed,” ministry spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) told a press conference yesterday.
An official, who wished not to be named, said the ministry was confident that it could retrieve a third of the money, about US$10.5 million, from Singapore, including US$6 million from Ching’s bank account, which has been frozen by the court and US$3 million from Wu’s bank account, on top of the NT$50 million (US$1.5 million) Wu returned to the ministry at the end of last year.
In related news, both the ministry and the American Institute in Taiwan yesterday refused to comment on a report in the United Daily News claiming that US officials from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency recently visited to assist the government in recovering money held overseas.
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