President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) filed a private criminal complaint yesterday against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Chuan-chiao (李全教), claiming that he had defamed them by alleging they had received illegal political contributions and department store gift vouchers.
The lawyer for the first couple, Ku Li-hsiung (顧立雄), visited the Taipei District Court to file the complaint against Lee, who claimed at a news conference last weekend that the president had received political contributions from a convicted criminal through a ranking official at the Presidential Office, while the first lady had received NT$8.8 million in Sogo Department Store gift vouchers.
Lee told the press yesterday that he had a witness who had seen Chen's family using the coupons.
Lee telephoned a lady surnamed Huang who told Lee that she saw Chen's daughter Chen Hsiung-yu (陳幸妤) and her husband buying bedding and pillows with Sogo coupons one day before the 2004 presidential election.
In related news, KMT Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) yesterday continued his string of corruption allegations aimed at presidential aides.
Chiu accused Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Ma Yung-cheng (馬永成) of taking NT$ 570 million (US$17.61 million) in political contributions via a merger last year between financial institutions.
"Cathay Financial Holdings bought Lucky Bank last year with the price at NT$16 per share, NT$2.64 higher than the Bank's net asset value per share. Why did Cathay Financial Holdings pay such a high price? This was an unusual situation," Chiu told a press conference.
Chiu, like Lee, is vying to be KMT's candidate in the year-end Kaohsiung mayoral election.
Chiu said that Lucky Bank released 215,083,083 shares to Cathay Financial Holdings, noting that the premium on this merger was NT$ 570 million.
Chiu said the merger was pushed through by Ma, who he said he had obtained a large sum as a political contribution as a result of the merger.
"Ma's cousin Lu Chung-ming (呂崇民) and his family own the largest stake in Lucky Bank. Ma should explain where the premium has gone," Chiu said.
Rebutting Chiu's accusations, Ma issued a statement yesterday expressing regret over Chiu's remarks.
Calling on Chiu to back his claims with evidence, Ma said he would take legal action against Chiu's "groundless accusation."
Additional reporting by Ko Shu-ling
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