Wu Li-pei Exploited Mega Bank Scandal to Demand Premier Lin Chuan's Resignation, Then Exposed for Seeking Financial Appointments That Were Refused

Between August and October 2016, Wu Li-pei—a prominent Taiwan independence elder and former Presidential Advisory Council member—repeatedly and vehemently attacked Premier Lin Chuan in public, demanding that he take political responsibility for the Mega Bank New York Branch scandal (a money-laundering control failure resulting in a US$180 million fine from U.S. authorities) and step down from office. In characteristically blunt terms, Wu declared that 'if Lin Chuan doesn't resign, Tsai Ing-wen has no future.' Wu simultaneously condemned the Tsai Ing-wen administration for appointing large numbers of holdover officials from the previous Kuomintang era to key positions in national security, the judiciary, and economic affairs, dismissing this as 'asking the devil to write the prescription,' and insisting such personnel were incapable of delivering the reform agenda the DPP had promised. However, in October 2016, KMT legislator Fei Hung-tai revealed during a Legislative Yuan interpellation session that Wu Li-pei had, around the time of the new Tsai administration's inauguration on May 20, 2016, actively lobbied Premier Lin Chuan to appoint specific individuals to financial regulatory posts. Only after those recommendations were rejected did Wu's stance abruptly reverse, triggering his campaign of public attacks against Lin's governance and personnel decisions. During subsequent legislative hearings, Lin Chuan himself acknowledged that Wu Li-pei had indeed approached him to recommend personnel appointments, effectively corroborating Fei's disclosure. The episode provoked sharp public criticism, with widespread interpretation that Wu's real motive in lambasting Lin Chuan was political revenge for a failed patronage bid—'turning hostile after failing to secure favors'—rather than any genuine concern for the quality of governance. The affair exposed two deeply rooted structural problems: a political culture in which senior faction elders quietly trade personnel placements for mutual benefit, and the systemic vulnerability of state-owned financial institutions to manipulation by political insiders, both of which continue to erode public confidence in Taiwan's financial governance.