The Taipei District Court yesterday sentenced six defendants in the Chu Mei-feng (璩美鳳) sex-VCD case.
According to Judge Hsu Shih-chen's (
Chung-ti Technology was the company that produced and duplicated the VCD for Scoop.
Both Wang and Hu are allowed to pay NT$300 a day for each day of their sentence as an alternative to serving time in jail.
Lin's and Wang's sentences were suspended for a period of three years.
According to a senior judge at the Taipei District Court, Lin's and Wang's sentences will be automatically dropped when the three-year probation period passes if they don't commit any other crime during the period.
"Kuo received the longest jail time because she never regretted what she did, even though she admitted she was the mastermind" behind the case, said Liu Shou-sung (劉壽嵩), spokesman for the Taipei District Court. "In addition, she still refuses to tell us where the master tape is. It's still a mystery."
Liu also said the court believed the magazine was "selling the private lives of others for profit" by giving away the sex-VCD instead of appending the disc as a "news reference."
"Rumors said the magazine bought the master copy of the VCD from Kuo. But we do not have any evidence of that," Liu added. "But the court believed that the magazine was invading Chu's privacy and selling the magazine along with the VCD for profit."
Chu is currently out of the country and did not make any comment. The magazine didn't respond, either. But Kuo said she will definitely appeal.
In the meantime, a civil claim in this case is still pending. In this claim, Chu has asked for NT$20.6 million from Kuo; NT$60 million from the magazine and NT$3 million from Hu.
According to Taipei Chief Prosecutor Lin Jinn-tsun's (林錦村) indictment on Feb. 7, 11 people were listed as defendants in this case. They are Kuo, Kuo's 19-year-old daughter, Kao Chun-chun (高淳淳), the former Hsinchu City mayor Tsai Jen-chien (蔡仁堅), Shen Yeh, Shen Jung, Wei, the magazine's employees and the VCD producer, Hu.
Kuo was recommended for a four-year sentence; Tsai was recommended for one year; Shen Yeh was recommended for two years and two months; Shen Jung was recommended for one year and four months and Wei was recommended for one year and 10 months.
Initially, Chu also filed an invasion of privacy charge against Tsai, Kuo and Kao. But she decided to drop the charge against Tsai on June 26. According to the Article 239 of the Criminal Code (
In the meantime, Kuo remains as a defendant for offenses against public morals and forging documents.
Invasion of privacy is a criminal charge but can be dropped at the request of the plaintiff, as the offense includes both private prosecution and public prosecution.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS