The Costa Rican government announced on Friday last week the details of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) purchase of US$300 million in Costa Rican government bonds in the Constitutional Chamber of the country’s Supreme Court. The government has been unwilling to provide detailed information in the case.
Costa Rican media last Saturday reported on the testimony in the Constitutional Chamber by the country’s minister of finance, Guillermo Zuniga.
Zuniga said at a press conference on Friday last week that China had bought Costa Rican 20-year government bonds worth US$150 million on Jan. 23 at an interest rate of 2 percent. No broker was involved and the Costa Rican government had paid no commission.
Zuniga said China would pay the remaining US$150 million in January next year. He said his government had not made the deal public at the request of the Chinese government.
Costa Rican media reporting on the deal said that the money would be supervised by Banco BTC SA, which was founded by Costa Rican Ambassador to China Antonio Burgues, who remains a shareholder in the bank.
Costa Rica severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan on June 7 last year after having established diplomatic relations with China on June 1.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said yesterday : “The truth of why Costa Rica broke up with us has finally been revealed.”
“It just goes to show that if we had continued to engage in a hostile diplomatic race with Beijing, Taiwan would unquestionably have been crushed,” he said.
Chen said for the year 2008 to 2009, MOFA’s budget has been roughly earmarked at US$1 billion (NT$30 billion).
“There is no way that we would be able to allocate one-third of our annual budget on cementing ties with just one country,” he said.
“This goes to show that a modus vivendi is necessary so we can avoid playing this money game [with Beijing],” he said.
Additional reporting by Jenny W. Hsu
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS