‘GOOD DEAL’:Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je told a city council meeting that buying back the Taipei Dome site and leasing it out again would be a ‘cost-effective’ measure
Taipei Times
Date: May 30, 2015
By: Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter
Former Taipei finance commissioner Lee Sush-der (李述德) of the Chinese
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je, right, addresses the Taipei City Council yesterday, saying that he will ask the Taipei Clean Government Committee to respond to a statement by former Taipei finance commissioner Lee Sush-der rejecting accusations of profiteering from the Taipei Dome project and urging Taipei’s Department of Ethics to launch another probe into the project. Photo: Fang Pin-Chao, Taipei Times
Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday rejected accusations of profiteering from the Taipei Dome project made against him by the Taipei Clean Government Committee, calling the investigation biased and politically motivated and urging the city government’s Department of Ethics to launch another probe into it.
A committee report earlier this month accused Lee and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of negotiating the Taipei Dome’s contract terms to allow illegal profiteering by Farglory Group (遠雄集團) during Ma’s tenure as mayor of Taipei. As Ma’s finance commissioner, Lee was responsible for much of the negotiation process.
In a written response, Lee rejected each of the committee’s allegations, saying that the city agreed to reduce Farglory’s royalties for site usage to zero in return for an increase to “feedback funds” the group was to pay out in benefits to city residents. The feedback funds, totaling NT$110 million (US$3.6 million) annually, were equal to about 2 percent of estimated yearly revenue for the Taipei Dome complex — far greater than the NT$2 million in usage royalties the city had originally sought, he said. [FULL STORY]
