KMT lawmaker Liao Hwu-peng (廖福本) was indicted yesterday for allegedly trying to coerce executives to sell fake stocks in the Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子). Prosecutors are demanding he serve seven years in prison if found guilty.
Tainan District Prosecutor Chao Chung-yueh (
According to the Tainan District prosecutor, Liao called Chi Mei Electronics nine times last year and demanded that the company sell him shares at discount prices. But Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp rejected Liao's request.
PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
Liao, 62, a six-term opposition legislator from Yunlin County, said he was innocent.
Liao questioned how the prosecutors could indict him when they had failed to find fake shares during a raid of his apartment, located in the Ta-an Complex, a government-owned residence for legislators, on Aug. 16 last year.
Another search of Liao's office in the Legislative Yuan last year was prohibited by speaker Wang Jing-pyng (
Meanwhile, Taipei District Prosecutor Liu Cheng-wu (
Liu said Liao was found to have changed the date of more than 30 bills illegally.
The total value of the checks is more than NT$300,000. But Liao claimed that his assistant had changed the dates at the request of the Bank of Taiwan.
To avoid accusations of violating legislators' rights, prosecutor Liu said he would question Liao on Feb.19, the eve of the new legislative session, which opens on Feb. 20.
Liao said he is suffering from an injured leg and can't be present at that time.
In addition to these two cases, prosecutors are also investigating whether Liao was involved in insider trading of certain stocks.
Liao said in a press conference yesterday at the Legislative Yuan that his friend had warned him that he might be in trouble after the DPP took power. He did not explain further, but said "now the words of my friend are unfortunately coming true."
Asked whether Liao had been a special target of the Ministry of Justice, justice minister Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) said yesterday that the ministry will do its best to crack down on all illegal activities, but will not get involved in any particular case as long there is sufficient evidence to prove the crime.Chen said government action to crack down on "black gold" would not change from one party or person to another.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head