Taiwan will continue efforts to track down nearly US$30 million that was allegedly stolen by two diplomatic brokers three years ago, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said on Sunday.
Local prosecutors said they have maintained contact with their counterparts in Singapore and the US in a bid to recover the US$29.8 million (NT$965 million) that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) wired to a Singapore bank account on Sept. 15, 2006, ostensibly to facilitate the establishment of diplomatic ties with Papua New Guinea.
The money was remitted to an account at Singapore’s OCBC Bank jointly held by the two brokers, Wu Shih-tsai (吳思材), a Singaporean national, and his partner, Ching Chi-ju (金紀玖), a Taiwanese with a US passport who was commissioned by the ministry in 2006 to help facilitate the deal.
The ministry asked Wu and Ching for a statement of the account early last year after discovering that by Dec. 1, 2006, all the money in the joint account had disappeared without any progress being made with Papua New Guinea.
Wu, without knowing that the ministry was aware of the fraud, produced a false bank statement on a notebook computer and gave it to the ministry.
He was taken into custody by prosecutors in May last year and indicted for forging the bank statement and lying to the police after he made up a story about being threatened by an unidentified gunman. He was found guilty of the charges a month later and sentenced to 28 months in prison.
Prosecutors said NT$300 million in bank accounts held by Wu and Ching and property Wu bought in Taipei City had been frozen. Some NT$70 million of the assets were in Wu’s name.
The Singapore High Court ruled on Saturday that the S$2.1 million (US$1.49 million) that had been in another of Wu’s accounts at OCBC Bank be returned to the Taiwanese authorities.
Meanwhile, Taipei prosecutors listed Ching, who is said to be living in California, as one of Taiwan’s most wanted fugitives last May as they continued their investigation into the case.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said it had asked for judicial assistance from the US government and suggested that US prosecutors question Ching on Taiwan’s behalf or allow Taiwanese prosecutors to travel to California to question Ching.
They have yet to receive a response from the US government.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
Taiwanese celebrities Hank Chen (陳漢典) and Lulu Huang (黃路梓茵) announced yesterday that they are planning to marry. Huang announced and posted photos of their engagement to her social media pages yesterday morning, joking that the pair were not just doing marketing for a new show, but “really getting married.” “We’ve decided to spend all of our future happy and hilarious moments together,” she wrote. The announcement, which was later confirmed by the talent agency they share, appeared to come as a surprise even to those around them, with veteran TV host Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) saying he was “totally taken aback” by the news. Huang,
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan. The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said. The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult
RSS