Vice President Annette Lu (
Lu yesterday became the nation's first incumbent vice president to be a defendant at a hearing.
"Prosecutors unfairly chose me as an investigation target and then indicted me. The prosecutorial system should have thoroughly probed the nation's more than 6,500 government officials in their use of their discretionary funds before deciding whether or not to indict me and other officials," Lu said, while making a short statement at the Taipei District Court before she entered the courtroom.
PHOTO: CNA
Lu said that former premier Su Tseng-chang (
"We must not allow the faults from an incomplete system of the old era to bring new disasters," she said.
Asked by judges how she would plead, Lu said: "I am not guilty of these charges."
Lu told the judges she did not know the details of the process involved in the reimbursement of special allowance funds, never received the funds illegally or directed her subordinates to use fraudulent receipts to claim her special allowance fund.
She said the charitable donations she had made during her term of office as vice president exceeded the special allowance funds she had received.
The Supreme Prosecutors Office in September indicted Lu, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Yu Shyi-kun and National Security Council Secretary-General Mark Chen (陳唐山) on suspicion of misusing their special allowance funds.
Lu, Yu and Chen were charged with corruption and forgery.
Prosecutors alleged that between December 2000 and May last year Lu used a total of 1,005 fraudulent receipts to claim reimbursements from her special allowance fund.
Prosecutors added that the receipts, collected by Lu's office staff and security guards, amounted to NT$5.6 million (US$170,000).
Earlier this year, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (
A district court accepted his argument that by law the fund was an official subsidy, and acquitted him in August.
However, prosecutors have filed an appeal to a higher court to challenge the acquittal.
DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) was investigated for misuse of discretionary funds during his tenure as mayor of Kaohsiung. No charges were made against him.
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant