The Taipei District Court yesterday ordered the detention of Yeh Sheng-mao (葉盛茂), former head of the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau, for allegedly withholding information on former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) possible involvement in money laundering.
Yeh stands accused of covering up for Chen and warning the former president that a foreign anti-money laundering organization was investigating alleged money-laundering by Chen’s family.
Yeh was indicted on Aug. 28 on suspicion of concealing government documents containing a list of overseas bank accounts in the names of members of Chen’s family and leaking national secrets. His lawyers have maintained he knew nothing about the alleged money laundering.
In yesterday’s hearing the presiding judge said Yeh’s behavior might have helped Chen profit illegally and therefore might have violated the Criminal Code.
The judge said because corruption is a serious crime with a minimum five-year sentence, the court had decided to detain Yeh, a decision that seemed to leave him shocked. He was taken to the Taipei Detention Center from the court after the hearing.
Yeh’s trial at Taipei District Court was due to take place behind closed doors on Sept. 15 because it involved national security issues, but the court later decided the hearing would be open to the public.
Prosecutors said that Yeh was supposed to relay information that the bureau’s Anti-Money Laundering Center obtained on Jan. 27 from the international anti-money laundering Egmont Group to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, but that the office never received it.
Prosecutors also accused Yeh of failing to pass on information it had obtained about possible money-laundering by former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) to prosecutors in 2006.
When the judge asked Yeh whether he had handed over classified documents to Chen in order to keep his job, Yeh said no.
He told the court he had not broken the law by handing over any documents to Chen and had not concealed any official documents.
“As a criminal investigator and an intelligence chief, I had to hand over documents concerning intelligence information to the head of [the] nation, which is legal,” Yeh told the court.
Chen’s office has said that the former president received two “pieces of intelligence” from Yeh, but that they were not documents.
A Chinese aircraft carrier group entered Japan’s economic waters over the weekend, before exiting to conduct drills involving fighter jets, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said yesterday. The Liaoning aircraft carrier, two missile destroyers and one fast combat supply ship sailed about 300km southwest of Japan’s easternmost island of Minamitori on Saturday, a ministry statement said. It was the first time a Chinese aircraft carrier had entered that part of Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), a ministry spokesman said. “We think the Chinese military is trying to improve its operational capability and ability to conduct operations in distant areas,” the spokesman said. China’s growing
Nine retired generals from Taiwan, Japan and the US have been invited to participate in a tabletop exercise hosted by the Taipei School of Economics and Political Science Foundation tomorrow and Wednesday that simulates a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2030, the foundation said yesterday. The five retired Taiwanese generals would include retired admiral Lee Hsi-min (李喜明), joined by retired US Navy admiral Michael Mullen and former chief of staff of the Japan Self-Defense Forces general Shigeru Iwasaki, it said. The simulation aims to offer strategic insights into regional security and peace in the Taiwan Strait, it added. Foundation chair Huang Huang-hsiung
PUBLIC WARNING: The two students had been tricked into going to Hong Kong for a ‘high-paying’ job, which sent them to a scam center in Cambodia Police warned the public not to trust job advertisements touting high pay abroad following the return of two college students over the weekend who had been trafficked and forced to work at a cyberscam center in Cambodia. The two victims, surnamed Lee (李), 18, and Lin (林), 19, were interviewed by police after landing in Taiwan on Saturday. Taichung’s Chingshui Police Precinct said in a statement yesterday that the two students are good friends, and Lin had suspended her studies after seeing the ad promising good pay to work in Hong Kong. Lee’s grandfather on Thursday reported to police that Lee had sent
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
RSS