Suggesting that President Chen Shui-bian's (
Chao was released on NT$10 million bail on Monday evening after being indicted for insider trading involving Taiwan Development Corp (TDC) stocks.
Because of a lack of evidence, prosecutors have elected not to charge Chao over other allegations against him, including that he accepted bribes from Su Teh-jien (
Puppet?
"It's hard to believe that Chao, an orthopedist, has the capability to intervene in so many matters. It must have been someone else acting through Chao. Chao's release will make it even more difficult to clarify other allegations," Chinese National Party (KMT) Legislator Pan Wei-kang (
KMT Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) said the court's decision not to prosecute Chao over his alleged acceptance of bribes was tantamount to "encouraging wrongdoing."
KMT Legislator Chiu Yi (
"Su has admitted that he spent NT$3 million on his TDC chairmanship campaign. The prosecutors should explain what Su did with that money," Chiu said.
People First Party Legislator Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) criticized prosecutors for conducting a perfunctory investigation into the insider-trading of TDC shares.
"We received information from a high-ranking prosecutor that insider-trading was not the only issue involved in the TDC scandal. There was also the issue of a `breach of trust.' But the charge sheet didn't mention this," Chang said.
Chang cited the anonymous prosecutor as saying that evidence had shown that Su had manipulated the price of TDC shares but that prosecutors had omitted this from the charge sheet.
Back to work?
Meanwhile, in related news, the National Taiwan University Hospital said yesterday that it had yet to receive an application from Chao to be reinstated in his post at the hospital.
Chao, an orthopedic doctor at the hospital, was suspended from duty during his 47-day detention. His colleagues took over his out-patient service.
Hospital spokesman Lin He-hsiung (
Lin said that as far as he knew, Chao was the only one of the hospital's doctors to be detained and suspended in the last 20 years.
Although a number of the hospital's doctors had been involved in legal proceedings involving medical disputes, they had not been detained or suspended, he added.
Lin said that Chao would have "ample time" to apply for reinstatement, adding that he could also ask someone else to apply on his behalf.
The hospital's personnel department would discuss any such application in line with the hospital's regulations, he said.
As there was no precedent, Lin said he was not sure how long it would take to deal with an application for reinstatement.
During his suspension, the hospital paid Chao half of his salary in accordance with regulations concerning civil servants, Lin said.
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:
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