Taipei Chief Prosecutor Hsueh Wei-ping (薛維平) yesterday wanted to detain former China Development Holding Corp chairman Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英) on charges of embezzlement and money laundering, but the Taipei District Court decided to let Liu go because of a lack of evidence.
Liu, who is president of the Taiwan Research Institute, was first interrogated by special agents from the Ministry of Justice's Bureau of Investigation at around 9:30am on Friday. At about 4pm, special agents transferred him to the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office for another interrogation by Hsueh.
PHOTO: LUO PEI-DE, LIBERTY TIMES
By about midnight, Hsueh believed that there was a good chance that Liu would destroy pieces of evidence or exchange information with crucial witnesses and filed a detention request.
The Taipei District Court began to review Hsueh's detention request at around 4am yesterday but finally decided to release Liu without bail at 8:20am.
As he was walking out of the court building, Liu said that he had an agreement with the judges that he would not comment on the case in public.
"I am quite tired now. Please understand that I am not supposed to comment on the case outside the courtroom. I gave the judges my word," Liu said.
Hsueh is currently investigating the disappearance in 1994 of US$4.5 million from a secret fund of US$10.58 million to secure Taiwan's diplomatic relationship with South Africa.
According to his investigation, the National Security Bureau paid the amount to South Africa to secure the diplomatic relationship between two countries on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in May 1994.
On April 4, 1999, the ministry returned a total of US$10.7 million, including interest, to the bureau. The bureau's former chief accountant, Hsu Ping-chiang (
Liu Kuan-chun is wanted for allegedly embezzling more than NT$192 million from the total amount. According to the Bureau of Investigation, Liu left Taiwan on Sept. 3, 2000 and went to Shanghai. He surfaced in Bangkok in January last year and from there went to North America. Sources say that he is now in Canada.
Liu Tai-ying allegedly wired the money to Ruentex Corp Chairman Yin Yen-liang's (尹衍樑) bank accounts in the US and Singapore. Upon receiving the money, Yin allegedly wired it to one of the Ruentex Corp's bank accounts in Taiwan. Then, he "donated" US$3 million of it to the Taiwan Research Institute. However, prosecutors have not yet discovered the whereabouts of the missing US$4.5 million.
Hsu has been detained since July 18. In addition, prosecutors have also interrogated Yin, then-minister of foreign affairs Jason Hu (胡志強) and many other witnesses. According to Hsu's statement, he insisted that he acted on direct orders from former National Security Bureau secretary-general Yin Tsung-wen (殷宗文). The initial order allegedly came directly from former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).
Yin Tsung-wen died of adenocarcinoma, a kind of lung cancer, on March 28 this year.
As a result, whether Lee was involved in or knew of the crime is another mystery which prosecutors are trying to figure out.
Hsueh said that prosecutors may summon Lee if necessary.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift