Taiwan DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen rejects conflict-of-interest allegations

 2011-12-09 TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Democratic Progressive Party Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen strongly rejected allegations Friday that she was guilty of conflict of interest over a biotechnology start-up which received government funds. Tsai became chairwoman of Yu Chang Biologics Company in 2007, months after she left the position of vice premier in the DPP administration. Critics alleged she broke the revolving-door clause barring government officials from holding top positions at companies within three years of their resignation if they had had dealings with it during the five years up to their leaving government. Tsai said she had actually helped the government make NT$1 billion (US$33 million) within three years. Neither she nor her relatives had invested in the company and made any huge profits, she told a news conference in Tainan Friday. Her part in the Yu Chang launch had been investigated already, so the recent spate of accusations was just the ruling Kuomintang trying to damage her reputation one month ahead of the presidential election, she said. Tsai has been mounting a strong challenge against President Ma Ying-jeou's attempt to win a second term in the January 14 poll. The DPP chairwoman said the sudden focus on the Yu Chang case served to divert attention away from Ma's poor record. She explained that three top academics invited her to serve as Yu Chang chairwoman because of her reputation as an international trade negotiator. Because the company was short of private investors at the time, she persuaded relatives to invest, but they left the company later on, she said. If the government's National Development Fund was quick to invest in the project, that was because of pressure from United States firm Genentech, which Yu Chang was set up to partner with, Tsai said. The fund reportedly only took six days before deciding to invest in the company. The KMT's behavior in this case was a disgrace to Taiwan democracy, Tsai said, because the ruling party was abusing its position in government and at the Legislative Yuan to throw doubt on innocent people. On Thursday, the KMT-dominated Economics Committee at the Legislature asked the National Development Fund to declassify all classified documents concerning the Yu Chang case and to send them to the committee for review.