Former Tainan mayor Shih Chih-ming (
"Prosecutors received information that Shih might attempt to leave the country, so we urgently arrested him and sent him to prison," said Shih Yun-hong (施韻宏), the Tainan Prosecutors' Office official in charge of Shih's arrest. "Shih was previously indicted for accepting bribes from another construction company, but he stayed overseas for a long time to avoid likely imprisonment. So Shih's record showed he might escape after a final verdict was given."
On Thursday, the Supreme Court sentenced Shih Chih-ming to eight years and six months in jail for receiving NT$20 million (US$623,198) in bribes from a construction company in 1993, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) member was serving as Tainan mayor.
Shih Yun-hong said that prosecutors asked the Supreme Court to immediately forward the papers on Shih Chih-ming's verdict to the prosecutors' office on Thursday, and then directed police and agents of the Ministry of Justice's Investigation Bureau to track him.
The prosecutor said that Shih Chih-ming had been sick and was staying at the Tainan hospital. On Friday afternoon, over doctors' objections because he still needed medical treatment, Shih Chih-ming asked the hospital to release him. He left the hospital at 3:30pm.
When prosecutors were informed that Shih Chih-ming had left the hospital, they immediately sent police and agents of the investigation bureau to look for him, suspecting he was at his girlfriend's residence.
The prosecutor said that late Friday, police monitoring the residence saw signs that Shih Chih-ming was likely staying there, and decided to raid the residence and arrest him early yesterday morning.
According to the prosecutor, Shih Chih-ming was shocked by the raid, and was in the middle of packing. He knelt down in front of the prosecutors, begged them to give him several days before sending him to the prison, and promised he would not try to escape.
Shih Chih-ming is temporarily being detained in a prison in Tainan, but will do his time at at Kaohsiung prison.
The prosecutor said that they had decided to swoop down on him after incidents in which politicians have fled the country after being found guilty of crimes.
Wu Tse-yuan (
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)
‘NEVER!’ Taiwan FactCheck Center said it had only received donations from the Open Society Foundations, which supports nonprofits that promote democratic values Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC) has never received any donation from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a cofounder of the organization wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday. The Taipei-based organization was established in 2018 by Taiwan Media Watch Foundation and the Association of Quality Journalism to monitor and verify news and information accuracy. It was officially registered as a foundation in 2021. National Chung Cheng University communications professor Lo Shih-hung (羅世宏), a cofounder and chairman of TFC, was responding to online rumors that the TFC receives funding from the US government’s humanitarian assistance agency via the Open Society Foundations (OSF),
ANNUAL LIGHT SHOW: The lanterns are exhibited near Taoyuan’s high-speed rail station and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the airport MRT line More than 400 lanterns are to be on display at the annual Taiwan Lantern Festival, which officially starts in Taoyuan today. The city is hosting the festival for the second time — the first time was in 2016. The Tourism Administration held a rehearsal of the festival last night. Chunghwa Telecom donated the main lantern of the festival to the Taoyuan City Government. The lanterns are exhibited in two main areas: near the high-speed rail (HSR) station in Taoyuan, which is at the A18 station of the Taoyuan Airport MRT, and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the MRT
RSS