The Ministry of Justice yesterday said it would begin an investigation into allegations that a top prosecutor illegally benefited from purchasing real estate at a discount price.
Local media reports yesterday alleged that Department of Prosecution Director Chen Wen-chi (陳文琪) and her husband purchased a Yuanta Construction Development (元大建設) apartment in Xinyi District at a 40 percent discount.
The reports said that when Supreme Prosecutor’s Office Special Investigation Panel prosecutors raided the property in connection with a structured notes scandal last year, prosecutors noted that Chen’s husband was a corporate lawyer at the company and decided not to search the premises.
The purchase of the flat, which has an estimated value of NT$100 million (US$3 million), has caused suspicion and it is alleged that the couple made under-the-table dealings to save more than NT$30 million on the deal.
In response, Deputy Minister of Justice Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) said yesterday that the ministry had put together a task force to probe the matter and had already asked the couple to provide asset declarations to assist the task force in its investigations.
Huang said that after reviewing the couple’s asset declarations he believed the couple had enough financial backing to purchase such a property.
He declined to reveal how much the couple paid for the property, saying he was protecting the couple’s privacy.
The task force has yet to determine whether the couple received discounts because of a special employee discount offer, he said.
“To conduct a fair investigation, the ministry has given Chen some time off,” he said.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS