The state's highest watchdog body, the Control Yuan, yesterday interviewed former director-general of the National Police Administration Ding Yuan-chin (
In a press conference afterwards, Ding said that the sources of the money which he spent in purchasing the house were all legitimate.
Ding owns a house in a high-class villa community called Vision City (
Last week two New Party Taipei City councilors claimed that Ding purchased the house at half price from the construction firm Hualon Corp (華隆集團). They also said that the price of the house was too high for someone with Ding's salary, that there was no record of Ding having taken out a loan and that his bank savings had not decreased.
There was an obvious implication that Ding was in receipt of undeclared financial assets which may have been acquired illegally.
Control Yuan members Li Shen-yi (
Ding last week released a written statement in which he stated that he was not corrupt. Yesterday at 3pm he made his first public appearance after being accused by the city councilors, taking part in a two-hour interview.
Ding said the price of the Vision City house was NT$325,000 per ping (one ping =3.3m2), not the rumored NT$200,000.
He said this was the market price in 1999, the year he bought the house.
He said the money which he used to buy the house included the profit gained from the sale of an apartment on Taipei's Hsinsheng North Road (
"And the friend is not Ong Da-ming (翁大銘)," he said. Ong is the CEO of the Hualon Corp and the person with whom Ding was rumored to have a financial connection.
The Control Yuan members said that according to their findings, the 106-ping Vision City house cost Ding NT$38.15 million.
As for why Ding's bank savings had not decreased, Ding said that he had borrowed the money from his friend in his son's name, using another apartment in Taipei's Peining Road (北寧路) as collateral.
The Peining Road apartment was also targeted by councilors, but Ding said he bought the apartment for his son in 1988, using money left by his father.
He said he was also planning to sell that apartment.
"That is to say, I am using two apartments to purchase one house," he said.
Li and Chao, meanwhile, said the Control Yuan would continue to investigate and establish the truth as soon as possible.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
RSS