The Taipei District Court on Tuesday approved prosecutors’ petitions to extend the detentions of real-estate tycoon Sheen Ching-jing (沈慶京) and former Taipei deputy mayor Pong Cheng-sheng (彭振聲) for another 60 days.
Sheen, founder and chairman of the Core Pacific Group (威京集團), and Pong have been detained since Aug. 30 and Sept. 1 respectively over their alleged involvement in a corruption case involving the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project, which has embroiled Taiwan People’s Party Chairman and former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
In a statement, the district court said it granted the prosecutors’ requests to prevent Sheen and Pong from potentially tampering with evidence or colluding with coconspirators amid the ongoing investigation.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Prosecutors can ask a court to detain and hold incommunicado a suspect under certain conditions during an investigation for up to two months at a time, for a maximum of four months.
Prosecutors have alleged that Sheen paid bribes of NT$47.4 million (US$1.48 million) to Taipei city officials to illegally increase the floor area ratio of a site previously occupied by Core Pacific City, a shopping mall in Songshan District (松山), to raise the property’s financial value.
Sheen has denied the allegation, saying that the money — which was given to Taipei City Councilor Ying Hsiao-wei (應曉薇), who is also being detained as part of the probe — was a charitable donation.
On Tuesday last week, prosecutors petitioned the court to extend Sheen’s detention, saying it needed time to track down witnesses or potential accomplices. On Friday last week, they petitioned to extend Pong’s detention.
Prosecutors are still seeking to determine whether Pong and Ko were involved in the allegations, which occurred during Ko’s second term as Taipei mayor from 2018 to 2022.
Pong’s detention was extended to give prosecutors time to check his statements, which differ greatly from other witnesses and suspects, the district court said.
A court hearing to decide whether Ko’s detention should also be extended for another 60 days was to be held at Taipei District Court this afternoon, but would postponed to tomorrow, after schools and work were suspended due to Typhoon Kong-rey.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
RSS