Prosecutors said yesterday that investigations into several former ministers' use of their discretionary fund were nearing completion and several former officials may be indicted for corruption.
Prosecutors from the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office yesterday said that they had interviewed some 10 former ministers from the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government on Friday.
These include former minister of justice Morley Shih (施茂林), former minister of economic affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆), former minister of the interior Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) and former minister of transportation and communications Tsai Duei (蔡堆).
Prosecutors said that some of these former officials were suspected of using fraudulent receipts to claim reimbursements from their special allowance fund in violation of the Criminal Law.
Prosecutors said they also planned to interview Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials who served before 2000 on their use of discretionary funds.
These would include then premier Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) and vice premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄). Siew is now the vice president and Liu the premier.
The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office on September indicted former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), former DPP chairman Yu Shyi-kun and former National Security Council secretary-general Mark Chen (陳唐山) on suspicion of misusing their special allowance funds.
Lu, Yu and Chen were charged with corruption and forgery. Their cases are pending in the Taipei District Court.
Then KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) faced similar charges early last year. Prosecutors accused him of misusing a special fund while serving as Taipei mayor from 1998 to last year.
A district court accepted his argument that by law the fund was an official subsidy and acquitted him in August.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
A magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 8:31am today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was located in Hualien County, about 70.3 kilometers south southwest of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 23.2km, according to the administration. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County, where it measured 3 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 2 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the CWA said.
The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese
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