The Taipei District Prosecutors' Office yesterday indicted business tycoon and KMT legislator Gary Wang (
The prosecution recommended that Wang be sentenced to four years and 10 months in jail, and Tsai be sentenced to three years.
Wang and Tsai, however, both insisted they were innocent.
Wang said in a TV interview that during the investigation he had told the truth and provided all relevant information to the prosecution. He believed that the court would ultimately clear his name.
Tsai held a press conference at the Legislative Yuan to say he was "surprised to be among the indicted." He said he had responded to the subpoena of the prosecution three times as a witness, not as a suspect.
He said he had nothing to do with the land deal.
The case involved two stages of sale and purchase of an approximately 75,000m2 plot of land in Yangmei (楊梅) Township, Taoyuan (桃園) County. During each stage, under-the-table deals between the two sides inflated the price to create illegal profits, according to the prosecution.
Gary Wang was chairman of Far Eastern Silo and Shipping (FESS,
Chu bought the land in 1995 for NT$500 million, but although land prices fell while he owned it, he sold it to FESS for NT$845 million.
The prosecution said around NT$189 million of the price difference found its way via several dummy accounts into the accounts of another company owned by Wang.
Chu's company also made NT$55 million from the artificially raised price, the prosecution said.
The prosecution said this was a conspiracy in which Wang, Chu and two others squeezed money out of FESS and its shareholders. FESS intended to build a villa complex on the land but, due to a continuing decline in real estate prices, Wang then sought, after partially developing it, to sell it off at an inflated price to the state-run Taiwan Development and Trust Corp (TDTC, 台開), also a listed company, the indictment says.
Wang then, according to the indictment, asked his close aide Chou Chi-peng (周繼鵬) to forge purchase records relating to the land and to manipulate a real estate valuation company into inflating the price of the land. Wang then asked Tsai Hau and Kao Chien-wen (高建文), both board members of the TDTC and the latter the vice chairman, to push the board into making a decision to buy the land in November 1999 -- despite a report conducted by the TDTC only a month earlier that concluded that such an investment was not worthwhile, the indictment continues.
The TDTC, the indictment says, bought the plot of land from the FESS at a price of NT$1.8 billion. Tsai, the indictment alleges, later received more than NT$130 million and Kao NT$30 million from Wang as kickbacks.
The prosecution said Tsai, now board chairman and publisher of the Min Chun Daily News (民眾日報), used the money to buy the newspaper. Tsai, however, denied the charge and said the purchase was a legal investment by Wang's Eastern Television (東森電視).
ENDEAVOR MANTA: The ship is programmed to automatically return to its designated home port and would self-destruct if seized by another party The Endeavor Manta, Taiwan’s first military-specification uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) tailor-made to operate in the Taiwan Strait in a bid to bolster the nation’s asymmetric combat capabilities made its first appearance at Kaohsiung’s Singda Harbor yesterday. Taking inspiration from Ukraine’s navy, which is using USVs to force Russia’s Black Sea fleet to take shelter within its own ports, CSBC Taiwan (台灣國際造船) established a research and development unit on USVs last year, CSBC chairman Huang Cheng-hung (黃正弘) said. With the exception of the satellite guidance system and the outboard motors — which were purchased from foreign companies that were not affiliated with Chinese-funded
PERMIT REVOKED: The influencer at a news conference said the National Immigration Agency was infringing on human rights and persecuting Chinese spouses Chinese influencer “Yaya in Taiwan” (亞亞在台灣) yesterday evening voluntarily left Taiwan, despite saying yesterday morning that she had “no intention” of leaving after her residence permit was revoked over her comments on Taiwan being “unified” with China by military force. The Ministry of the Interior yesterday had said that it could forcibly deport the influencer at midnight, but was considering taking a more flexible approach and beginning procedures this morning. The influencer, whose given name is Liu Zhenya (劉振亞), departed on a 8:45pm flight from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) to Fuzhou, China. Liu held a news conference at the airport at 7pm,
Authorities yesterday elaborated on the rules governing Employment Gold Cards after a US cardholder was barred from entering Taiwan for six years after working without a permit during a 2023 visit. American YouTuber LeLe Farley was barred after already being approved for an Employment Gold Card, he said in a video published on his channel on Saturday. Farley, who has more than 420,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, was approved for his Gold Card last month, but was told at a check-in counter at the Los Angeles International Airport that he could not enter Taiwan. That was because he previously participated in two
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS