The first-stage probe into "possible irregularities" in the handling of President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) special state affairs expenditure account is almost complete, the Taiwan High Prosecutors' Office (THPO) said yesterday.
"After more than a month of intensive investigations, we have accumulated a rich collection of data on the use of the president's special `state affairs fund' and plan to give a public briefing on our progress next week," a THPO official said.
The THPO formed a special task force in late June to investigate the case after receiving suspicious financial data and accounting records related to the president's special "state affairs fund" from the Ministry of Audit (MOA) under the Control Yuan.
Members of the task force confirmed for the first time yesterday that they have interviewed at least 20 people, including the Presidential Office accounting department staff, about the "state affairs" expenditure account.
Some of the task force mem-bers have visited the Presidential Office to gather information, including examining classified files. Nevertheless, they declined to confirm whether they had interviewed former Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Ma Yung-cheng (馬永成), Chen's former right-hand man. So far, only Lee Pi-chun (
Opposition politicians have accused Chen of using "fake invoices" to obtain reimbursement for special "state affairs" expenses after the MOA found irregularities in the Presidential Office accounting report.
Lee Pi-chun told the prosecutorial task force that she had given Grand Hyatt Hotel invoices to "other people" but that she had no idea why those invoices ended up in the accounting reports of the Presidential Office.
Lee denied that she has ever given the controversial invoices directly to first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍). Opposition lawmakers had alleged that Wu might have used the controversial invoices to help her husband reimburse the "state affairs fund." The president has repeatedly denied that he has pocketed a single cent from the fund.
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