The Ministry of Justice yesterday said it would today make a request to the Swiss government to arrest and repatriate British fugitive Zain Dean, who fled Taiwan in August last year on someone else’s passport.
Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Shou-huang (陳守煌) made the remark last night after citing information obtained from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that its representative offices overseas reported that Dean had absconded to Switzerland.
The ministry earlier yesterday said it has notified all of its representative offices to work with their host nations in an effort to track down Dean.
Taiwan hopes to work with the government of whichever country Dean is found in to get him sent back to Taipei to serve his four-year prison term, ministry spokesperson Steve Hsia (夏季昌) said.
Hsia said Taiwan’s representative office in the UK has also been working closely with British government agencies.
The office said on Tuesday that it had rejected conditions set by Dean for him to return to Taiwan.
Representative to the UK Shen Lyu-shun (沈呂巡) said the office received an e-mail from Dean in which he said he would only be willing to return on four conditions: a retrial, having previously unreleased video evidence presented in court, having human rights observers present at the new trial and for him to be free of discrimination based on his skin color. He is of South Asian descent.
Dean was convicted in July last year of the death of a newspaper deliveryman in Taipei in March 2010 while allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol.
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
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