The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the verdict handed down by the Taiwan High Court, acquitting former Tainan deputy mayor Hsu Yang-ming (許陽明) of corruption charges in relation to the use of a special allowance fund.
The final verdict made Hsu the first of a number of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials to clear his name after being accused by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of misusing special allowances. Political observers are now waiting to see if Hsu’s case will serve as a reference point in other trials involving former DPP officials.
The Supreme Court handed down the verdict on the grounds that Hsu “had no disposition” to embezzle from his special allowance, a fund allocated to executive officers at various levels to be spent at their discretion.
“I am not happy at all,” Hsu said after learning of the not-guilty verdict, saying he had suffered humiliation at the hands of prosecutors, as well as defamatory comments over a four year period that he said have damaged his reputation.
Hsu said that many in the court of public opinion found him guilty before he was given a chance to prove his innocence in court.
Likening the case to “death by a thousand cuts,” Hsu said it was “despicable” that prosecutors indicted him on corruption charges without a proper investigation.
The reasons stated on the indictment brought against him by prosecutors — namely that he sought reimbursement from the fund after leaving office and that part of the special allowance allocated to the city mayor was used to reimburse personal expenses — were false, Hsu said.
He alleged that he was indicted because prosecutors wanted to use his case as a counterbalance to the case brought against President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), then-chairman of the KMT, who was at the time indicted for siphoning funds from his special allowance fund when he was mayor of Taipei City from 1998 to 2006.
“The prosecutors used the judiciary as a political tool,” Hsu said.
Tainan City Councilor Hsieh Lung-chie (謝龍介) of the KMT filed a lawsuit against Hsu in 2006, accusing him of siphoning off special allowance funds into his personal account during his tenure as deputy mayor of Tainan City from 2002 to 2005 and using fraudulent receipts to claim reimbursements.
In the indictment, Hsu was charged by prosecutors with using 130 fraudulent receipts, including some from his wife, Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲), a DPP lawmaker, worth more than NT$310,000, to secure personal reimbursements from the special allowance fund.
The Tainan branch of the Taiwan High Court did not rule in the prosecutors’ favor, as the judges were of the opinion that whether an expense was eligible for reimbursement from the special allowance fund should be interpreted broadly, rather than narrowly restricting reimbursement to expenses incurred during work hours.
In Hsu’s case, Wang Hsiao-fang (王筱芳) and Huang Wen-chung (黃紋崇), his former secretary and bodyguard respectively, were also indicted by prosecutors on corruption charges, for allegedly providing receipts to enable Hsu to secure further reimbursements from the allowance fund.
Wang and Huang were also acquitted of the charges on Thursday as the Taiwan High Court invoked an “exemption clause,” expressing sympathy with their decision to provide personal receipts to help their employer obtain reimbursements, despite the problematic nature of the practice.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS