Source: UDN

 July 16, 2018

 

With respect to the Taipei Dome case, the Taipei District Prosecutors Office determined that Ma Ying-jeou did not instruct Lee Sush-der, then director-general of the Taipei City Finance Department, to engage in negotiations, hence, closed the case as there was no evidence to implicate Ma Ying-jeou in involvement in benefiting himself or others.

 

The Taipei District Prosecutors Office pointed out in its investigation that the Taipei Dome case originated from Chen Shui-bian’s term as Taipei City mayor; at that time, the “Taipei Dome Committee” was established. After Ma Ying-jeou was elected mayor, the city started to invite entrepreneurs in public tender, and the Farglory Group won the bid. In 2004, the Farglory Group was selected by City Hall as the best applicant for this BOT case, which then began to negotiate the terms of the contract with City Hall, incurring questioning by outside circles on the part of the latter as profiting certain parties.

 

According to the investigation of the Taipei District Prosecutors Office, Lee Sush-der, during his term as director-general of the Taipei City Finance Department, knew full-well that City Hall needed to incur a debt to secure the land for the Taipei Dome and had to pay NT$370 million in interest per year. For this expenditure, City Hall needed to use royalties collected from operating the Dome to alleviated its financial burden; thus, when Lee attended the third contract negotiation meeting in September 2004, he wrongfully stated that Farglory Group chairman Chao Teng-hsiung had a meeting with Ma Ying-jeou and reached a decision that City Hall would not collect royalties for operating the Taipei Dome, causing City Hall a loss of NT$3 billion.

 

At the time, the Taipei District Prosecutors Office, in order to investigate whether Ma Ying-jeou  and Lee Sush-der had colluded with criminal intent, sharing actions, decided to conduct investigations separately. After a year of investigations, based on the evidence they had, it was difficult to determine that Ma Ying-jeou was involved in the case; therefore, it closed the case on the 13th of July.