President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) son-in-law, Chao Chien-ming (趙建銘), has not enjoyed special treatment since being locked up on Thursday at the Taipei Detention Center for alleged involvement in an insider trading case, a spokesman for the center said yesterday.
Wu Man-ying (巫滿盈), deputy warden of the Taipei Detention Center, said that Chao had not made any particular requests after his arrival at the center, and that he had followed normal procedures.
This is the first time in the nation's history that a member of the first family has been detained by court order.
PHOTO: CHEN TSE-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
According to Wu, Chao looked tired when he first arrived at the center. The previous night he had been questioned for 10 hours about the role he played in the alleged insider trading of Taiwan Development Corp shares. After a night's rest, he seemed to be in good spirits, Wu said.
Wu said that Chao was sharing a cell with a man charged with corruption while he was a public office-holder.
The deputy warden said that as a newcomer, Chao was not allowed to go outdoors for exercise on Thursday, but that he did go outside with other inmates yesterday.
PHOTO: CNA
The Taipei District Court granted a request by public prosecutors to detain Chao and the three other suspects. The decision was made after the court obtained evidence that the four made huge profits by purchasing millions of shares of the near-bankrupt Taiwan Development Corp after obtaining inside information that the company was going to get a NT$16 billion syndicated loan from 29 financial institutions.
Prosecutors are scheduled to summon Liu Teng-cheng (劉燈城), director general of National Treasury Agency under the Ministry of Finance, on Monday for questioning in connection with the scandal.
Liu is head of a task force that oversees government-appointed representatives at financial institutions. Liu served as chairman of the Bank of Taiwan when the lender arranged a NT$16.5 billion (US$515.1 million) syndicated loan to TDC last August.
Searches
Also yesterday, Bureau of Investigation agents carried out searches at pharmaceutical companies for evidence that one or more of the firms may have bribed Chao.
Investigators suspect that Chao, an osteopath at National Taiwan University Hospital, may have accepted bribes from drug firms after discovering three suspicious deposits of NT$9 million (US$280,000) each in his father's bank account. Investigators believe one or more medical suppliers may have tried to buy Chao's influence at the hospital in order to boost their sales.
The hospital on Thursday stripped Chao of his professional duties after he was detained.
Ticket booking
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) claimed yesterday that Chao and his wife booked airline tickets to Japan on May 16, four days after Chao's involvement in the alleged insider trading was exposed.
"Chao and Chen need to explain why they wanted to go abroad at a time when there was a rumor that Chao might be summoned to court for questioning," Chiu told a press conference.
Chiu accused Chao and his wife of trying to flee abroad to avoid being investigated, and displayed China Airlines booking records to back up his claims.
The booking records showed that Chao and Chen also booked tickets for their two sons. Chao's return date was booked for May 25 and Chen's was booked for June 3.
On May 22, the presidential office denied that Chao booked the tickets because of the insider trading allegations, saying that Chao and Chen booked the tickets before the case was exposed.
Chiu yesterday accused the presidential office of lying.
But the Presidential Office yesterday repeated that Chao's planned trip to Japan had nothing to do with the allegations.
"They booked the ticket to Japan in early May, but the presidential office doesn't know the exact date. They canceled the trip on May 21, after the alleged case was exposed," the office said.
Denying rumors
Meanwhile, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lan Mei-ching (
Liu yesterday claimed that a China Airlines flight attendant told him that Chao and his wife, the president's daughter Chen Hsing-yu (陳幸妤), had slapped each other while quarreling during a flight.
Lan said that no one else had claimed to witness this scene, and urged the public not to believe unverified rumors passed on by the media.
"I also hope that the public will not speculate about how Chen Hsing-yu will deal with her marriage, which would put too much pressure on an expectant mother. Please give her some time to think about her decision," Lan said.
Chen Hsing-yu is seven months pregnant.
Additional reporting by Amber Chung
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