President Ma Ying-jeou

Taipei, Feb. 23 (CNA) Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) of the Democratic Progressive Party should pay President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) NT$600,000 (US$18,031) in compensation for insinuating that Ma received illegal political donations, and run an apology statement in newspapers, the Taipei District Court ruled Tuesday.

Upon hearing the verdict, Tuan said he will appeal.

Ma filed the lawsuit against TV pundit Chen Min-feng (陳敏鳳) and Tuan after Chen wrote in a digital newspaper in 2014 that several high-tech entrepreneurs pooled NT$200 million in political donations at a luncheon in 2007.

Tuan also insinuated on a TV program and on his Facebook page that L&K Engineering Co. was able to merge with RSEA Engineering Corp., a former state-run enterprise, after donating NT$100 million to Ma.

The president filed the suits against Chen and Tuan in January 2015, demanding NT$10 million in compensation from each of them.

During the trial, Tuan said his source was Lin Chien-cheng (林健正) of National Chiao Tung University. Lin said that Kenneth Yao (姚祖驤), chairman of L&K Engineering, allegedly told him that he had donated NT$100 million to Ma.

But in his court testimony, Lin said that he probably had heard wrong, and that Yao could have been just joking.

The court, which handled Tuan's case first, ruled that he had insinuated that political donations to Ma were a quid pro quo for the merger of L&K Engineering and RSEC Engineering, but he failed to check and confirm the matter.

The case against Chen continues.

(By Page Tsai, Wen Kui-hsiang and Lilian Wu)
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