Prosecutors have filed formal charges against KMT legislator Kuo Ting-tsai (
Fan Wen-chin (
Kuo, along with Hsu Shu-chin (許淑卿), the credit co-op's director, and 10 others have been indicted on charges of breach of trust, fraud and falsifying securities certifi-cates.
PHOTO: LIBERTY TIMES
Fan stated that the evidence gathered by his staff shows that Kuo played a major role in the bank scandal.
He said Kuo and Hsu used their positions at the head of the co-op to instruct accountants to falsify account books and certificates of deposit in order to embezzle NT$2.3 billion from an agricultural firm and a local bank whose funds were deposited in the co-op.
Summonses have been issued for others involved in the scandal, with bail for the suspects set between NT$50,000 and NT$100,000.
Kuo, meanwhile, showed up at the Legislative Yuan early yesterday to register for the new legislative session. Kuo previously failed to appear in court after being issued two summonses.
He later disappeared, leading the court to issue a warrant for his arrest on Aug. 26. Kuo's position as a legislator grants him immunity from arrest and detention while the lawmaking body is in session, unless the Legislative Yuan voids this privilege.
Kuo claimed he had not received either of the two summonses issued by the Pingtung County Prosecu-tors' Office (
He repeatedly told reporters he had not tried to evade the summonses, and stated he would appear at the Pingtung County Prosecutors' Office within the next few days.
Kuo, who has recently undergone a minor surgical procedure, looked pale and tired. The left side of his face was still paralyzed from the operation, adding to his haggard appearance.
"The Ministry of Finance should bear part of the responsibility for the scandal in Tungkang," Kuo said. "I'm only nominally responsible. Most of my time is spent in the legislature. They're the experts -- if they can't get to the bottom of all the problems, how do they expect me to figure things out?
"If prosecutors are going to indict me, that's fine. I would never advise anyone not to take legal action against me," he said.
Kuo also claimed that he was not involved in any wrongdoing at the bank. "If I had embezzled money from the cooperative, I wouldn't need to put up my own property as collateral for loans. I could save the money on interest, and wouldn't have to run around trying to repay all these loans," he said.
Kuo is a long-time member of the Finance Committee of the Legislative Yuan, and registered with the committee this morning.
When asked whether he would use his committee position to press his case with officials of the Central Deposit Insurance Corp (
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
Suspected Chinese spies posing as Taiwanese tourists have been arrested for allegedly taking photographs of Philippine Coast Guard ships, local media reported. The suspected spies stayed at a resort in Palawan, where from a secluded location they used their phones to record coast guard ships entering and leaving a base, Philippine TV network GMA said on Wednesday. Palawan is near the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) and other disputed areas of the South China Sea, where tensions have been on the rise between China and the Philippines. The suspects allegedly also used drones without permission and installed cameras on coconut trees in the
RSS