Former president Lee Teng-hui (
Lee asked his lawyer to file an application with the Taipei District Court's Civil Department to hand over to him the NT$248,380,089 in Soong's bank account that the court had frozen as evidence in the scandal.
"The former president said the money belongs to the people so it should be returned to the people," lawyer Chuang Po-lin (
"The money was entitled to the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] chairman. Since Lee is not the chairman, he asked me to file the application for him," Chuang said.
According to Chuang, the money was deposited by Soong and was frozen by the court as evidence for the case in 2000.
Chuang said the case was about Soong's stealing money from the KMT.
"Since Lee is no longer the chairman of the KMT, he hoped that the court will make this amount of money payable to him so he can carry out what he was planning to do," Chuang said.
Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Legislator Lo Chih-ming (
"Since money came from the public, the former president would return the money to the people as part of the drive to return the KMT's [stolen] assets to the people," Lo told the Taipei Times.
"It highlights the fact that James Soong embezzled the KMT's money," he said.
"Lee said he never authorized Soong to keep the illicit money as Soong had claimed. Soong, then secretary-general of the KMT, was the highest authority responsible for the party's finances, including all sorts of fundraising, which wouldn't have gone through the chairman," Lo said.
Lo said that of the NT$248 million, NT$100 million was donated by former Tuntex chairman Chen Yu-hao (陳由豪), while NT$80 million was donated by Liang Po-hsun (梁柏薰), a fugitive accused of embezzling from the Overseas Chinese Bank.
Chen Yu-hao's targeting of President Chen Shui-bian (
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods