Several prosecutors have recently been detained or released on bail on corruption charges, damaging the reputation of the nation's legal system. With the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) having launched an investigation into another 27 prosecutors, the profession is coming under fire, with some saying prosecutors have too much power and that institutional flaws are behind the problems.
A lead prosecutor at Kaohsiung's Taiwan High Prosecutors' Office, Chang Hsueh-ming (
At the Taipei Prosecutors' Office and Kaohsiung Prosecutors' Office, for example, Chang said that each prosecutor handles 80 to 90 criminal cases a month. With about 100 prosecutors in each of the two offices, the head and lead prosecutors are too busy to oversee every case.
As a result, Chang said, prosecutors are able to decide whether or not to indict defendants, meaning that they enjoy more power than the law actually gives them.
After former Yunlin County prosecutor Hsu Wei-yu (
Shih has asked head prosecutors nationwide to carefully review the cases handled by their offices.
Shih acknowledged that among the roughly 1000 prosecutors nationwide, some are bound to be corrupt and he has asked head prosecutors to pay more attention to prosecutors' personal lives.
Shih said that former Chiayi prosecutor Sung Tsung-yi (
Hsu Wei-yu is another example. Evidence shows he often dined and went to hostess clubs with local police and gangsters, Shih said.
Shih said "prosecutors' personal lives can, to a certain degree, reveal whether or not they are clean."
Shih has asked head prosecutors to report to the ministry if prosecutors are found to have close relations with gangsters, those who run illegal businesses or local police.
Shih said that as part of a crackdown on bad prosecutors, the ministry has launched an investigation on another 27 prosecutors."
Chang said the nation's prosecutors have enjoyed more power since the implementation of a law in September 2003 that allows indictments to be suspended (緩起訴).
Chang said that under the law, prosecutors can suspend an indictment if the defendant has committed a minor crime or admits guilt.
Chang said the law was introduced to reduce the number of criminal cases sent through the legal system. It has effectively reduced prosecutors and judges' work burdens, but also gave prosecutors new rights.
"It is hard to prevent prosecutors from accepting bribes in exchange for suspending a defendant's indictment," Chang said.
Chang said when the law was drafted, some legal experts had been concerned that it might cause corruption problems, but the law was still passed.
Shih said that some prosecutors like to cultivate relations with police and agents of the Ministry of Justice's Investigation Bureau (MJIB).
But experience has shown that this kind of cooperation often leads to collusion between the two sides.
Shih said that Hsu, who led an investigation by police into a multi-million dollar professional baseball game-fixing scandal, is suspected of betting on baseball games with the officers. Hsu is also accused of taking and sharing bribes with police officers who had worked with him for several years.
Shih said that former Kaohsiung prosecutor Chen Cheng-ta (
Shih said that two agents from the MJIB who had worked with Chen were also detained, on suspicion of being involved in the fabricated charges.
Kaohsiung prosecutors have said Chen charged the two men with weapons smuggling in order to apply for a reward offered by the ministry to those who uncovered weapons smuggling.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS