President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) plans to take legal action against anyone who alleges that he has accepted illicit political donations, the Presidential Office said yesterday, one day after saying that Ma would sue Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) and political commentator Chen Min-feng (陳敏鳳) over such statements.
Ma filed criminal and civil lawsuits against radio host Clara Chou (周玉蔻) on Dec. 30 last year after she said that he received a NT$200 million (US$6.4 million) under-the-table donation from Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團) during his 2012 re-election campaign.
The office on Friday released a statement saying that the president would appoint lawyers to take legal action against Tuan and Chen this week to “defend his reputation and send a correct message to society.”
“Chen has continued to spread rumors and hints with his fictional stories that the president accepted illegal political donations even after the office made clarifications; Tuan has also made the same false accusation against the president,” Presidential Office spokeswoman Ma Wei-kuo (馬瑋國) said.
Ma Wei-kuo added that Presidential Office Director Kang Bing-cheng (康炳政) would also enlist lawyers to defend his reputation by pursuing legal action against people who make related “mudslinging and false accusations.”
Chen has said that at least 12 magnates from the telecommunications and electronics industries met in 2007 during Ma Ying-jeou’s initial presidential campaign and made the NT$200 million donation to the candidate, who — Chen added — handed the money over to one of his close aides.
“The aide has been around Ma for more than a decade, but is not been well-known to the public,” Chen wrote in an article in which she accused Ma of receiving the funding that was published by an online media outlet.
While Chen did not identify the aide, Yao Li-ming (姚立明), a political commentator and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) executive campaign director during last year’s elections, intimated on a television talk show that Kang is the alleged aide.
Kang has worked for Ma Ying-jeou since 1984 and was identified by Chinese-language Next Magazine in 2008 as the aide responsible for Ma’s funding, Yao said.
Yao also called on the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Division to summon Kang for questioning, according to the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper).
After hearing of the reports, Tuan said: “To be sued by the president is the highest achievement in the realm of critique.”
Tuan has not stopped challenging the president’s clarifications, posting on Facebook yesterday: “A key point has so far been overlooked by all the reports and discussions, which is that while the Presidential Office has denied that any illicit donations were received, none of those named magnates has come up to deny giving the donations.”
Taiwanese could risk being extradited to China when traveling in countries with close ties to Beijing, Taiwan Association of University Professors deputy chairman Chen Li-fu (陳俐甫) said on Friday. Chen’s comments came after China on Friday last week announced new judicial guidelines targeting Taiwanese independence advocates. Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Djibouti are among the countries where Taiwanese could risk being extradited to China, he said. The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday elevated the travel alert for China, Hong Kong and Macau to “orange” after Beijing announced its guidelines to “severely punish Taiwanese independence diehards for splitting the country and inciting secession.” Extradition treaties
Taiwan and Thailand have signed an agreement to promote and protect bilateral investment and trade, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations (OTN) said on Friday. The agreement on “Promotion and Protection of Investments” was signed by Representative to Thailand Chang Chun-fu (張俊福) and Thailand Trade and Economic Office in Taipei executive director Narong Boonsatheanwong on Thursday, the OTN said in a news release. Thailand has become the fifth trading partner to sign an investment agreement with Taiwan since 2016, following earlier agreements with the Philippines, India, Vietnam and Canada, the OTN said. The deal marks a significant milestone in the development of
The entire Alishan Forest Railway line is to reopen for the first time in 15 years on Saturday, with tickets to go on sale at 2pm today. The historic railway from Chiayi to Alishan (阿里山) is finally set to reopen after the completion of the final No. 42 tunnel, Alishan Forest Railway and Cultural Heritage Office Deputy Director-General Chou Heng-kai (周恆凱) said. It is to run on a new timetable, with four trains daily, he said. The 9am train is to depart from Chiayi Railway Station bound for Shizilu Station (十字路), while the 10am train departing from Chiayi is to go all the
CROSS-BORDER CRIME: The suspects cannot be charged with cybercrime in Indonesia as their targets were in Malaysia, an Indonesian immigration director said Indonesian immigration authorities have detained 103 Taiwanese after a raid at a villa on Bali, officials said yesterday. They were accused of misusing their visas and residence permits, and are suspected of possible cybercrimes, Safar Muhammad Godam, director of immigration supervision and enforcement at the Indonesian Ministry of Law and Human Rights told reporters at a news conference. “The 103 foreign nationals stayed at the villa and conducted suspicious activities, which we suspect are activities related to cybercrime activities,” he said, presenting laptops and routers at the news conference. Godam said Indonesian authorities cannot charge them with conducting cybercrime. “During the inspection, we