A group of lawyers and civic groups yesterday said that if the “cronyism in the finance sector and judiciary” that began under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) persists, young people — who are facing the concentration of capital, impoverishment and a low birth rate — risk becoming a “crumbled generation.”
Lawyer Fan Jen-yu (樊仁裕) said that the finance sector has hired people from the former administration to be their “door gods.”
For example, Hsueh Hsiang-chuan (薛香川) has been the vice chairman of CTBC Financial Holding (中信金控) since resigning as Executive Yuan secretary-general during former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) first term in 2009, former Mega Financial Holding Co chairman Mckinney Tsai (蔡友才), who resigned in April, became one of Cathay Financial Holding Co’s board of directors (until he resigned on Aug. 23), Catherine Lee (李紀珠), the chairperson of state-run Taiwan Financial Holdings until the end of last month, was formerly the president of Shin Kong Financial Holding Co, Fan said.
He also called on Tsai’s administration to hold former Mega Financial Holding Co chairman Shiu Kuang-si (徐光曦) — who resigned on Thursday — accountable for breaches of US money laundering rules rather than “keeping him at large because he is central bank Governor Perng Fai-nan’s (彭淮南) sister-in-law’s husband.”
The composition of the Committee of Illegal Party Asset Settlement, Tsai’s grand justice picks and the members of the Executive Yuan’s monitoring taskforce overlooking the Mega Bank incident are all in one way or another related to a particular law firm and the Judicial Reform Foundation, Fan said.
Northern Taiwan Society Chairman Chang Yeh-sen (張葉森) said that there have been a string of financial malpractice cases but the government has not demonstrated “resolve” in dealing with them.
National Taiwan University professor of law Chen Chih-lung (陳志龍) said economic crimes and serious corruption are rarely prosecuted, making Taiwan a “haven for economic crimes.”
Wang Yi-kai (王奕凱), who was an active participant in the Sunflower movement protests, said the economy has fallen into the hands of “crony capitalists... to the extent that, according to The Economist, Taiwan is even worse than China in this respect.”
“Taiwan is also relying far too much on an ‘insubstantial economy’ that puts too much emphasis on land speculation and financial exchange and is a breeding ground for political nepotism,” he said, calling on the government to support startups by providing information on the needs of the global economy and promoting value-added production.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
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