Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his wife were convicted and sentenced to more years in prison yesterday on graft charges.
Chen was convicted of accepting NT$200 million (US$6.9 million) in bribes in connection with Yuanta Financial Holding Co’s (元大金控) merger with Fuhwa Financial Holding Co (復華金控) and sentenced to another 10 years, the Supreme Court said in a statement.
Chen, 62, is currently serving an 18-and-a-half year term for corruption and money-laundering.
By law, an individual can serve only a maximum of 20 years in prison unless a life term is imposed. A court will announce early next year how much Chen’s jail term will be extended by yesterday’s ruling.
Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Division spokesman Chen Hung-ta (陳宏達) said one result of the ruling is that the government will now be able to ask the Swiss government to return the money which Chen’s family deposited in a Swiss bank.
The court said the money was paid to Chen as a bribe by Yuanta. The sum has been frozen by Swiss authorities since the scandal broke in 2008.
Chen’s wife, Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), already sentenced to 19 years and two months on four convictions for charges including corruption and perjury, was sentenced to eight years in jail.
Chen’s defense attorney, Shih Yi-lin (石宜琳), said the Supreme Court still favored the argument that “the president played an influential role.”
“It is a very controversial stance in the legal field. It is also an expanded interpretation on the legal power and authority of the presidency,” Shih said, adding that he would consider whether to appeal the ruling.
Chen Shui-bian’s office issued a statement questioning whether the ruling was the result of “political interference” that aimed to disgrace Chen by rendering a verdict that was unconstitutional.
Saying the money came from political donations, Chen and Wu’ son, Chen Chih-chung (陳致中), accused the judiciary of being pliable when it came to dealing with his father.
Chen Shui-bian was detained in November 2008 on corruption charges stemming from his two terms as president between 2000 and 2008. He and members of his family have been accused of laundering millions of US dollars by sending political donations and secret diplomatic funds abroad, and taking kickbacks on government contracts.
Chen Shui-bian insists that the legal actions against him are a vendetta carried out by President Ma Ying-jeou’s administration (馬英九) in retaliation for promoting Taiwan’s independence from China during his years in office. The government rejects the allegations.
Additional reporting by Lee Hsin-fang
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying