Tycoon says he fingered official for corruption
Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2014-12-17 05:29 PM
Central News Agency ()
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Tycoon Samuel Yin said Wednesday he was the one who accused Taoyuan County Vice Magistrate Yeh Shih-wen of corruption, while he hinted he might come up with money for a food safety foundation originally promised by the embattled Ting Hsin International Group.
Yeh was indicted last July on charges he accepted bribes from Farglory Land Development Co. Chairman Chao Teng-hsiung for government-sponsored low-cost housing projects. The former official was also investigated for other cases of construction groups paying money in return for government contracts.
In an interview with the Chinese-language magazine Business Today, Ruentex Group Chairman Yin said that a year and a half ago, Yeh, who was serving as the chief of the central government’s Construction and Planning Agency at the time, came to visit him to demand payment. Yin said he was so disgusted he phoned the Ministry of Justice’s Agency Against Corruption the next morning.
Because he had made notes of the conversation and passed them on to the ACA, Yeh was put under observation by investigators, which eventually led to his detention, Yin said.
Yeh reportedly promised him that he could hand him the contract for the best one out of four lots of low-cost apartments in Linkou, New Taipei City. In return for 1 percent of the complex’s market value, Yeh said he would be able to influence the evaluation committee members to award the contract to Yin.
When the tycoon pointed out that this practice was illegal, Yeh reportedly said that he had been a civil servant all his life and that it was time to prepare for his retirement.
Yin told the magazine that the more he thought about Yeh’s request, the more uncomfortable he became. Therefore, he decided that government officials should not be allowed to just go out and demand money, according to Business Today. Even though prosecutors did not take immediate action against Yeh, his revelations led to him being put under observations, which led to his detention in the Taoyuan case, Yin told the magazine.
In the case of the food safety foundation, he said that if Ting Hsin’s Wei family failed to come up with the NT$3 billion (US$95.8 million) it promised last October, he would donate the amount.
After repeated adulterated oil scandals broke out with Ting Hsin at their center, two of the four Wei brothers who run the group appeared at a news conference with Yin to promise the setting up of the foundation with their money and with the Ruentex chairman as its convener within a month.
One of the brothers, Wei Ying-chung, was detained shortly after and charged in a variety of food safety scandals. The public launched a massive boycott against the whole group, which reportedly caused it problems in meeting its promise by the original deadline, Yin said.
