Outgoing KMT legislative whip Lee Chuan-chia (
It seemed like there was not one day he failed to call news conferences implicating ranking government officials in the alleged influence-peddling scheme involving Zanadau Development Corp.
TAIPEI TIMES FILE PHOTO
Lately, he has shifted his attention to the Kaohsiung City Council where members reportedly elected their independent colleague Chu An-hsiung (
The 43-year-old Lee, who won his second term as a lawmaker through party appointment, asserted that by exposing both scams, he intended to help eradicate the kind of money politics that has gnawed at the nation's wealth and sapped people's confidence in the government.
"Sick and tired of graft and corruption in Taiwan, I have decided to assume the mantle of scandal-buster," he said during a recent interview. "There is no way the country can move forward otherwise."
Last September, he accused Senior Adviser to the President Yu Chen Yueh-ying (
After Liu failed to secure bank loans for Su's cash-strapped company, Su turned to DPP officials for help in a bid to salvage her Zanadau venture, a multi-billion-dollar plan to build a giant shopping mall in Kaohsiung County, according to Lee.
"At least eight DPP heavyweights took bribes of between NT$10 million and NT$30 million from Su after she sought in vain to obtain loans through the China Development Industrial Bank," he said.
Lee singled out Yu Chen for criticism, saying the former Kaohsiung County commissioner, who briefly served as Zanadau president, exploited her post to boost her own wealth.
The lawmaker also urged investigators to probe Yu Chen's son, Interior Minister Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲), who, Lee noted, quickly approved licenses for the Zanadau project after succeeding his mother as Kaohsiung County commissioner.
"Investigators cannot solve the puzzle if they pass over the Yu clan, which played a key role in the rise and fall of the venture," he said.
Denying ulterior motives, Lee said people losing money on the ill-fated project lodged complaints with the KMT caucus about the alleged irregularities.
"Because of my leadership at the caucus, I had access to the materials they supplied. It does not matter who tipped me off as long as the charges are accurate," said Lee whose daily expose of corruption led critics to brand him a rumormonger.
Su, who accused Liu and his aides of bilking NT$10 billion from her, was detained on New Year's Eve for unfairly inflating the land value of the Zanadau mall, amongst other charges.
The businesswoman has shied away from comments on her ties to the Yu clan except to say that she has settled her accounts with Yu Chen.
In the run up to the Kaohsiung mayoral election, Lee made further revelations, claiming that DPP incumbent Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) accepted a NT$4.5 million check from Su during his stint as lawmaker.
Days later, he displayed a copy of Su's bank statement that showed she wired NT$4.5 million to a Taipei Bank account on Nov. 25, 1994, with Hsieh as the payee.
"Hsieh should give a clear account of what the money was for," Lee said, adding he suspected the mayor also took part in the Zanadau affair.
With a masters in Electric Engineering and a PhD in business administration, Lee said his hunches rarely prove to be wrong.
The allegations at one point threw Hsieh's mayoral campaign into disarray as he canceled campaign events on Dec 5, two days before the vote, and traveled to Taipei to check his bank accounts. The mayor explained the money at issue was a back debt owed to him, which had nothing to do with the Zanadau project.
On election day, Hsieh managed to retain his mayoralty by a narrow margin, with sympathetic supporters vowing to besiege Lee's Tainan office to seek revenge on Hsieh's behalf.
Undaunted, some 300 of Lee's supporters amassed outside his office on Dec. 9, chanting slogans in a bid to safeguard their lawmaker.
A clash was avoided after the DPP camp called off the planned demonstration.
"The threatened protest was taken as a provocative act by my constituency as a whole," said Lee, who entered politics seven years ago when he returned from the US to take care of his parents.
After he questioned Hsieh's ties to the business community, the lawmaker said his family members had received phone calls threatening their safety.
"To be honest, I miss my days as an entrepreneur abroad," he said. "As a politician I have no privacy at all, not to mention any enjoyment of life."
In the US, Lee ran his own company and factory. He started his career as a hardware designer and sold his first patent on a motherboard for US$180,000.
He has since warned the nation to brace itself for another Zanadau-like scandal, saying the alleged vote-buying by Kaohsiung City councilors revealed only the tip of the iceberg. "It is contracts for the city's mass rapid transit system that are the real prize contractors are after," Lee said, declining to elaborate.
Industrious and headstrong, the two-term legislator drew mixed views from his fellow colleagues.
KMT lawmaker Cheng Feng-shih (
Hung Hsiu-chu (
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