Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is set to stay in prison for at least 11 years after the Supreme Court yesterday upheld a bribery conviction in a land purchase scandal.
Supporters of the former president said they were devastated by the ruling, which can no longer be appealed. Chen’s office called the verdict — which came just days after a local court cleared him in another bribery case — politically motivated.
In the verdict, the Supreme Court agreed with the lower court’s ruling that the former president and his wife, Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), accepted bribes of up to NT$300 million (US$10 million) in return for helping facilitate a land deal between the government and a property development company.
The deal saw Taiwan Cement Corp (台泥) chairman Leslie Koo (辜成允), whose company was in financial difficulties at the time, pay the money to a close friend of the former first lady. In return, the former president pressured a government-run science park to rent and then purchase a plot of land in Taoyuan County that Koo managed, the ruling by the lower court said.
Koo had testified that the amount was originally given as commission, rather than a bribe.
In the unexpected decision made yesterday afternoon, the Supreme Court ruled that both Chen and his wife should serve 11 years in prison, a reduction of a year from the sentence handed down by the lower court, over their roles in the scandal and that they should each pay NT$150 million.
Tsai Ming-che (蔡銘哲), Wu’s friend who acted as the middleman in the case, was given an eight-month prison sentence, while former Hsinchu Science Park head James Lee (李界木) was handed a 42-month sentence.
In the same ruling, the court also sentenced Chen and his wife to eight years in prison for accepting a bribe of NT$10 million from former Taipei Financial Center Corp (台北金融大樓公司) chairwoman Diana Chen (陳敏薰) in exchange for helping her secure an appointment at a securities firm.
In that case, Wu was also handed a seven-month sentence for money laundering.
Diana Chen had insisted during the trial that the amount was given to the former first lady as a political donation for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) during Chen Shui-bian’s tenure as party chairman. Prosecutors said the NT$10 million was instead promptly wired overseas.
As of press time, it was still unclear whether the sentences would be served consecutively or concurrently.
Speaking to the press immediately following the ruling, in one of several suits the former president is fighting, Chen Shui-bian’s office secretary, Chiang Chih-ming (江志銘), said the ruling was politically motivated.
“Many of his [Chen Shui-bian’s] supporters have told me that they will not accept this verdict,” Chiang said.
Chen Sung-shan (陳淞山), Chen Shui-bian’s former office manager who last week visited the former president at the Taipei Detention Center, where the former president has been held since December 2008, said Chen Shui-bian had not expected the ruling to come so soon.
Just hours before the ruling was announced, Chen Shui-bian’s office had issued the latest version of the former president’s bi-monthly diary, in which he claimed he should be found innocent because both cases were unrelated to his presidential powers.
He wrote that the courts should not confuse his “moral responsibilities with his legal responsibilities,” adding that the ruling should be based on a strict definition of the law “and not according to what society wants.”
Commenting on the verdict, the former president’s son, Chen Chih-chung (陳致中), currently running for election to the Greater Kaohsiung council as an independent, called on the public to “show their anger” by voting against President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration in the upcoming special municipality elections.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Office, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) all said that they respected the court’s decision.
Declining to comment on whether the ruling would impact the upcoming elections, DPP spokesman Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) said that “both parties, regardless of color, have already learned to calmly and reasonably deal with Chen Shui-bian’s legal troubles.”
Yesterday’s ruling came a week after the Taipei District Court acquitted Chen Shui-bian on a separate case of taking NT$600 million for helping facilitate bank mergers. The Taipei District Court also cleared him of embezzling diplomatic funds in June. Prosecutors have said they will appeal both rulings.
Three other cases, including charges related to another land deal, money laundering and embezzling secret diplomatic funds, for which the Taiwan High Court originally ruled the former president should serve a 20-year sentence, were returned to the lower court by the Supreme Court for another ruling yesterday.
PROVOCATIVE: Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Sun Lei accused Japan of sending military vessels to deliberately provoke tensions in the Taiwan Strait China denounced remarks by Japan and the EU about the South China Sea at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, and accused Tokyo of provocative behavior in the Taiwan Strait and planning military expansion. Ayano Kunimitsu, a Japanese vice foreign minister, told the Council meeting on maritime security that Tokyo was seriously concerned about the situation in the East China and South China seas, and reiterated Japan’s opposition to any attempt to change the “status quo” by force, and obstruction of freedom of navigation and overflight. Stavros Lambrinidis, head of the EU delegation to the UN, also highlighted South China Sea
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said it expects its 2-nanometer (2nm) chip capacity to grow at a compound annual rate of 70 percent from this year to 2028. The projection comes as five fabs begin volume production of 2-nanometer chips this year — two in Hsinchu and three in Kaohsiung — TSMC senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Silicon Valley, California, last week. Output in the first year of 2-nanometer production, which began in the fourth quarter of last year, is expected to
Taiwan’s economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter, as booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove a surge in exports, spilling over into investment and consumption, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. GDP growth was 13.69 percent year-on-year during the January-to-March period, beating the DGBAS’ February forecast by 2.23 percentage points and marking the most robust growth in nearly four decades, DGBAS senior official Chiang Hsin-yi (江心怡) told a news conference in Taipei. The result was powered by exports, which remain the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, Chiang said. Outbound shipments jumped 51.12 percent year-on-year to
RSS