Amid allegations of misuse of public funds and illegally favoring specific groups, Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) yesterday said he would hand over all information relating to the Taoyuan Aerotropolis project to the Ministry of Justice’s Agency Against Corruption (AAC) for investigation.
“The city’s new administration team has simplified and limited the operations of the Taoyuan Aerotropolis Corp (桃園航空城公司) to investment promotion and marketing only,” Cheng said in a Facebook post. “All jobs and duties that should be under the city government’s control will be returned to the city and handled by its bureaus. It would be a return to the normal process of policy execution and allow the project to be supervised publicly by elected representatives on the city council.”
Cheng said he had asked Deputy Mayor Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) to set up a task force composed of different local government bureaus — including budget, accounting and statistics, finance, economic development and civil service ethics — to oversee the special investigation of the aerotropolis firm.
Photo: Hsieh Wu-hsiung, Taipei Times
Project documents will first be organized and reviewed by the task force before they are forwarded to the AAC for investigation, Cheng said.
“Only when Taoyuan has the courage to correct previous mistakes can it march forward into a new beginning,” he said.
Asked whether the move would mean suspending or mothballing the project completely, Chiu answered in the negative.
Photo: Huang Yi-pi, Taipei Times
“The project consists of many parts and only those found to be problematic will be investigated and halted,” he said.
To address questions about the project’s opaque operations and functions, Chiu said: “It will be carried out according to five major principles, as the mayor has insisted: transparency, democratic participation, green economics, public interest and industry investment.”
“The corporation’s operation will be restricted to what was originally called for. That would place the rest of the business, including land appropriation, back in the hands of the city government so it can be publicly overseen by the city council,” he added.
The Taiwan Association for Human Rights welcomed the mayor’s action, and said it hoped the mayor would live up to the promise he made during his election campaign that he would place the whole project under investigation, especially in regards to “allegations of land speculation and insider trading even before the project had taken shape.”
Chiu said the city government welcomes any person or group to file complaints about what they consider illicit or to take legal action against suspected corruption.
Chien Chien-jung (錢建榮), a Taoyuan District Court judge who has long questioned the project’s necessity, criticized Cheng on Tuesday, saying that the mayor’s comment on “rebuilding the project from scratch after completely demolishing it” was nothing but “empty words.”
Calling for a “demolition and nothing more,” Chien wrote in a letter published by a local publication that neither Taoyuan nor Taiwan needs such a project, which has from the outset been synonymous with land speculation and collusion between government officials and the business sector.
“Mayor Cheng should easily see it now with the internal information available to him,” he added.
The city government released a statement on the same day rebutting Chien’s accusation that what Cheng has done is simply to “have a different group of people lining their pockets” with the project.
“The mayor has prohibited all first-level city officials and members of the core team, including himself, from purchasing land other than that for primary residence,” the statement said, adding that execution of the project would now be in the hands of the city government and thus be properly supervised.
France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and accompanying warships were in the Philippines yesterday after holding combat drills with Philippine forces in the disputed South China Sea in a show of firepower that would likely antagonize China. The Charles de Gaulle on Friday docked at Subic Bay, a former US naval base northwest of Manila, for a break after more than two months of deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. The French carrier engaged with security allies for contingency readiness and to promote regional security, including with Philippine forces, navy ships and fighter jets. They held anti-submarine warfare drills and aerial combat training on Friday in
COMBAT READINESS: The military is reviewing weaponry, personnel resources, and mobilization and recovery forces to adjust defense strategies, the defense minister said The military has released a photograph of Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) appearing to sit beside a US general during the annual Han Kuang military exercises on Friday last week in a historic first. In the photo, Koo, who was presiding over the drills with high-level officers, appears to be sitting next to US Marine Corps Major General Jay Bargeron, the director of strategic planning and policy of the US Indo-Pacific Command, although only Bargeron’s name tag is visible in the seat as “J5 Maj General.” It is the first time the military has released a photo of an active
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
COORDINATION, ASSURANCE: Separately, representatives reintroduced a bill that asks the state department to review guidelines on how the US engages with Taiwan US senators on Tuesday introduced the Taiwan travel and tourism coordination act, which they said would bolster bilateral travel and cooperation. The bill, proposed by US senators Marsha Blackburn and Brian Schatz, seeks to establish “robust security screenings for those traveling to the US from Asia, open new markets for American industry, and strengthen the economic partnership between the US and Taiwan,” they said in a statement. “Travel and tourism play a crucial role in a nation’s economic security,” but Taiwan faces “pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in this sector, the statement said. As Taiwan is a “vital trading
RSS