The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday said it was comparing statements made by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and three others who were summoned on Thursday evening over allegations that Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) had leaked details of an investigation into a case of alleged improper lobbying by Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平).
Ma, Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) and former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Lo Chih-chang (羅智強) were subpoenaed as witnesses, while Huang was questioned as a defendant.
The district prosecutors’ office summoned the four after several lawyers and citizens filed lawsuits against Huang, accusing him of leaking secrets in the Special Investigation Division’s (SID) probe when he briefed Ma on information gathered through wiretapping involving Wang and Democratic Progressive Party caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘).
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The prosecutors summoned Ma to clarify the details of meetings he had with Huang on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, five days before Huang called a press conference to accuse Wang of misconduct.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said Ma was given plenty of time to answer prosecutors’ questions. After the questioning, which was conducted from 8pm to 9:30pm, Ma spent more than 10 minutes reading his testimony before signing it, the office said.
The office added that prosecutors offered the president a travel fee for coming in to present his statement, but Ma declined, saying he traveled by foot.
Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office spokesman Huang Mo-hsin (黃謀信) said prosecutors were busy comparing the four statements and the office has not decided whether it should arrange a confrontation meeting for all parties.
Separately, Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) said the ministry’s task force set up to investigate the wiretapping controversy has interviewed experts from Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) to learn more about technologies involved in wiretapping.
Chen said their statements would be compared with those made by SID prosecutors, as well as experts from the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau.
Chen added that the task force had questioned SID spokesman Yang Jung-tsung (楊榮宗) and SID prosecutor Cheng Shen-yuan (鄭深元), but it has not decided whether to question Huang.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
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