Kaohsiung District Court yesterday held the first pre-trial hearing on a two-year-old indictment against Kaohsiung City Council Speaker Chu An-hsiung (朱安雄) and his wife Wu Te-mei (吳德美), both of whom are in prosecutors' custody on suspicion of buying votes to secure Chu's election as speaker.
Chu and Wu were indicted on forgery and breach of trust charges in the 2000 case.
"The hearing was to answer questions from judges after they had reviewed the evidence and statements submitted by prosecutors," said Lin Shui-cheng (林水城), a spokesman for the Kaohsiung District Court.
The indictment states that the couple withdrew NT$22.7 billion from the An Feng Group -- of which Chu is president -- pocketing the money for private purposes. It lists the charges as forging legal documents and breach of trust and demands a seven-year prison sentence for each of them.
The couple, who have been in detention in connection with the high-profile vote-buying case since Dec. 28 were not present for the hearing as they were undergoing further interviews with prosecutors in connection with that case. They were represented at the hearing by their defense counsel.
Chou Chang-chin, (周章欽) the spokesman for Kaohsiung District Prosecutors Office confirmed that the couple had been summoned for interviews in connection with the bribery case, but told reporters, "I cannot tell you anything about the interviews."
Chou said that it was just a "coincidence" that the pre-trial case coincided with the bribery investigation.
At a press conference on Dec. 27 last year in response to Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan's (陳定南) complaint on Dec. 25 that laziness on the part of judges had delayed the case, Lin announced yesterday's hearing and attributed the delay to the large amount of evidence in the case, its complexity and the judges' desire to review all the evidence carefully and accurately.
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