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 (
WANG RELEASED: A police investigation showed that an organized crime group allegedly taught their clients how to pretend to be sick during medical exams Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and 11 others were released on bail yesterday, after being questioned for allegedly dodging compulsory military service or forging documents to help others avoid serving. Wang, 33, was catapulted into stardom for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代). Lately, he has been focusing on developing his entertainment career in China. The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last month began investigating an organized crime group that is allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified documents. Police in New Taipei City Yonghe Precinct at the end of last month arrested the main suspect,
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
LITTORAL REGIMENTS: The US Marine Corps is transitioning to an ‘island hopping’ strategy to counterattack Beijing’s area denial strategy The US Marine Corps (USMC) has introduced new anti-drone systems to bolster air defense in the Pacific island chain amid growing Chinese military influence in the region, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. The new Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) Mk 1 is being developed to counter “the growing menace of unmanned aerial systems,” it cited the Marine Corps as saying. China has constructed a powerful defense mechanism in the Pacific Ocean west of the first island chain by deploying weapons such as rockets, submarines and anti-ship missiles — which is part of its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy against adversaries — the
Eleven people, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸), were taken into custody today for questioning regarding the evasion of compulsory military service and document forgery, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. Eight of the people, including Wang, are suspected of evading military service, while three are suspected of forging medical documents to assist them, the report said. They are all being questioned by police and would later be transferred to the prosecutors’ office for further investigation. Three men surnamed Lee (李), Chang (張) and Lin (林) are suspected of improperly assisting conscripts in changing their military classification from “stand-by
RSS