As the nation awaits the Supreme Administrative Court's verdict on the suitability of Far Eastern Toll Collection Co in taking charge of the Highway Toll Collection (ETC) System, public interest in the potential scandal over Far Eastern's winning of the bid is also growing.
Sung Nai-wu (宋乃午), former chief secretary of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC), said yesterday that he was willing to have a face-to-face talk with People First Party Legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (劉文雄), who last year accused Sung of assisting Far Eastern in securing the bid for Taiwan's largest "build, operate and transfer" (BOT) project.
Specifically, Liu charged that Sung gave counterfeit paintings to members of the review committee and asked Far Eastern to buy back those paintings for NT$1.2 billion (US$36.4 million).
PHOTO: CNA
Sung denied the accusation at a press conference yesterday at the Taipei Prosecutors' Office.
"I swear I will kill myself if I am found to be involved in the scandal," saididSung, showing a knife he had prepared before making the public statement.
Investigators summoned former minister Lin Ling-san (林陵三) and asked him to clarify details regarding the bidding process in an attempt to find out whether Lin knew anything about the alleged bribery.
According to a Taipei Prosec-utors' Office's spokesperson, evidence shows that the scandal is a complicated affair and may involve a number of high-ranking officials.
The scandal was accidentally discovered by prosecutors when they were investigating axle counter purchases by the Taiwan Railway Administration. Prosecutors have found telephone records showing that the same group of officials and contractors had attempted to use the same method to secure the ETC project.
Sung was found to be heavily involved in the decision-making process for the ETC system. He was also said to have convened closed-door meetings on the ETC system without obtaining permission from his supervisors.
Investigations on the ETC system began last year before the local elections. Political pressure has mounted since then, with legislators from both the pan-green and pan-blue camps accusing each other of engaging in illegal transactions.
Prosecutors are now trying to trace the flow of the funds by investigating several major bank accounts.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching