Nantou County Commissioner Peng Pai-hsien (
The three local government heads, all currently charged with corruption, yesterday morning made an appeal to Control Yuan member Lin Shih-chi (
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The three said that prosecutors had leaked information to the media during the investigation, which is prohibited by law.
According to the three, prosecutors also violated the procedure for searching government institutions.
In the process, they said, investigators often illegally confiscated property and government documents that belong to the local municipalities.
"They would not return any of the detained property or documents to us, even though the detained objects are utterly unrelated to our cases," the indicted officials said.
According to the three, the official lists for the confiscated objects are not complete, and many items taken away by prosecutors are not listed at all.
They also charged investigators with using threats to force them into making erroneous statements, although there was no mention as to how this was done.
They also complained that their personal reputations, as well as the image of local governments, had been seriously harmed due to the prosecutors' misconduct.
"The prosecutors' ignorance of human rights has damaged the foundation of this democratic nation," the three said. "Hopefully, the Control Yuan can step in to right the wrongs in order to promote judicial reform in Taiwan," they added.
Lin yesterday said that the Control Yuan will accept the appeal and will start an investigation soon.
On Jan. 12, Nantou District Prosecutors' Office indicted Peng and asked for a 20-year sentence for corruption and embezzlement of funds earmarked for 921 earthquake victims. Peng was detained for nearly two months and was released on NT$2 million bail on Jan. 13.
Chang -- along with Tainan City Urban Development Bureau Director Tung Mei-chen (
Lin Kuang-hua was also indicted for corruption and on Jan. 5 and faces a 10-year sentence. According to the prosecutors, Lin and his wife Huang Yueh-hung (黃月紅) tried to blackmail the Chung Kuo Institute of Technology (中國技術學院) for NT$3 million by threatening not to approve the school's construction license.
‘UNFRIENDLY’: Changing the nationality listing of Taiwanese residents to ‘China’ goes against EU foreign policy as well as democratic and human rights principles, MOFA said Taiwan yesterday called on Denmark to correct its designation of the nationality of Taiwanese residents as “China” or face retaliatory measures. The Danish government in 2024 changed the nationality of Taiwanese citizens on their residence permits from “Taiwan” to “China.” The decision goes against EU foreign policy and contravenes democratic and human rights principles, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said. Denmark should present a solution acceptable to Taiwan as soon as possible and correct the erroneous designation to preserve the longstanding friendship between the two nations, Hsiao said. The issue could damage Denmark’s image and business reputation in Taiwan,
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
Taiwan climbed to its highest position in global export rankings in more than three decades last year, buoyed by demand linked to artificial intelligence (AI) that lifted shipments of semiconductors and technology products, Ministry of Finance data released yesterday showed. Taiwan accounted for 2.4 percent of global exports last year, or about US$640 billion, ranking 12th worldwide, the data showed. That was up four places from a year earlier and marked the nation’s best ranking since 1994, the ministry said. Taiwan’s share of global exports rose by 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, the largest increase among major economies, reflecting the nation’s
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
RSS