Tycoon Tsai denies involvement with Chen family graft

Two senior executives of the Yuanta Financial Group pleaded guilty but were seeking plea bargains with prosecutors of the Special Criminal Investigation Division under the Supreme Prosecutors Office.

When appearing at a hearing of the Taipei District Court yesterday, vice chairman Tsai Cheng-yu of Cathay Financial protested the indictment against him.

Tsai said the indictment of his allegedly aiding the former first family in money laundering dealings was the biggest insult to his life of decency.

He told the court that when former first lady, Wu Shu-chen, visited one of his bank branches, he personally met her on the understanding that she was helping to introduce some clients to his company.

Lee Ming-hsien, another vice chairman of Cathay Financial, had handled the whole business case related to Wu, Tsai said.

After learning that Lee had personally footed the bill, Wu, who did not pay the rental fee for using the bank's deposit facilities , said he then made the payment so that Lee would not suffer a personal financial loss.

Tsai added that he knew nothing about the business deal with Wu thereafter.

Ma Ji-ling, founder of the Yuanta Financial Group, was another defendant but was unable to make himself clear due to severe illness and advanced age. His daughter said he now has the mental capacity of a six-year-old's.

But Ma Wei-chien, a son of Ma and former president at Yuanta, and Tu Li-ping, a senior executive at Yuanta, both pleaded guilty in handling the delivering of NT$720 million in cash to the deposit vault of the Cathay Group for Wu.

Their lawyers said both will seek plea bargains with prosecutors.

The prosecutors have been probing whether some top financiers paid huge funds to former President Chen and his family and helped them with money laundering in exchange for favors when he was accelerating the mergers and acquisitions among financial holding firms in the name of “phase two financial reforms.”

Chen's family insisted that all money received was political contributions rather than bribes for giving political or business favors.

It turned out later, that the Cathay Group beat all other strong competitors to acquire United World Chinese Commercial Bank and formed Cathay United Bank.

The Yuanta Group successfully acquired Fuhwa Financial Holding.

Other defendants appearing at the court session yesterday included Ma Yung-cheng, former President Chen's confidant and deputy chief of staff. He denied any wrongdoing and said he should never be indicted as a defendant for dubious financial dealings.

Ma Wei-cheng, Yuanta Group founder, Ma's another son and former chief operating officer at the group, also denied any involvement and pleaded innocence.

The court set the next hearing for the case on March 10.

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