The Ministry of Justice's Investigation Bureau and Taipei District Prosecutors' Office yesterday traded accusations over who was responsible for leaking allegations about a "secret" presidential bank account to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅).
Last Friday, Chiu held a press conference accusing President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of opening a "secret" account, depositing around NT$169 million (US$5.15 million) into it and later transferring the funds abroad.
Chinese-language newspapers the China Times and the United Daily News reported that Chiu met with his sources, said to be two men, in a Taipei County motel, and that it was they who provided the information about the president's bank accounts in Taishin International Bank.
The reports said the two were suspected of being agents from the bureau's Money Laundering Prevention Center, which monitors the transfer of large amounts of cash overseas.
The bureau at a press conference on Monday denied that its agents were responsible for the leak, saying that Taipei prosecutor Hsu Yung-chin (
The bureau's remarks were seen as letting the public know that the bureau was not the only agency to have knowledge of Chen's accounts.
Hsu yesterday told the media that the bureau's remarks were nonsense, saying it was intending to shift the blame for the leaking of confidential information to specific newspapers and Chiu.
The bureau has come in for criticism for leaking confidential information to the United Daily News and Chiu while investigating corruption allegations including Chao's insider trading case, the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp investigation and the Sogo Department voucher case.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Office yesterday said it was seriously considering whether to file a lawsuit against Chiu for alleging that President Chen had a "secret" bank account.
Presidential Office Spokesman David Lee (
Lee made the remarks after Democratic Progressive Party spokesman Tsai Huang-liang (
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