Justice minister blasts short jail terms for fines

Gambling-arcade tycoon Chou Jen-sen, left, carries a bag with his possessions as he leaves prison yesterday, accompanied by some friends. His case helped trigger a revision of the law governing jail time in lieu of paying fines. PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES

Future lawbreakers will not be able to avoid paying massive fines by spending a few months in prison, Minister of Justice Morley Shih (施茂林) said yesterday, commenting on the release of video-arcade tycoon Chou Jen-sen (周人蔘).

"A new law was passed by the legislature in February and will be implemented next July," Shih told reporters yesterday.

He said the new law was partly motivated by Chou's case.

"The maximum of six months [instead of a fine] was too short and unreasonable for cases of business crime and corruption," he said.

Chou was sentenced by the Taiwan High Court in 1997 to two years in jail and fined NT$900 million for running a network of illegal video-gambling parlors in northern Taiwan.

In 2003, the court sentenced him to eight years and six months for bribery.

But because the Taipei District Court had ordered Chou detained as soon as prosecutors launched their first probe of him in 1996, his time in detention was counted against his jail time and Chou's sentence was finished last year.

However, the Taiwan High Court sentenced him last year to five months for illegally building a house in a mountain reserve area and ordered him to pay the outstanding fine from the 1997 ruling.

The court siezed NT$34 million of Chou's property to count toward the fine but prosecutors said he had disposed of most of his property before it could be seized.

According to the Criminal Code, the maximum prison term for those unable to pay a fine is half a year.

So Chou went to prison last September to serve the six months for the remaining unpaid fine and five months for the house.

Chinese-language newspapers yesterday noted that Chou's six-month term in exchange for the outstanding fine worked out to NT$5 million for each day that he served.