The Presidential Office yesterday dismissed an allegation made by an opposition legislator that President Chen Shui-bian (
"The allegation is false because the president has never offered any names to Prosecutor Eric Chen (
David Lee said President Chen only provided receipts to Eric Chen. Since prosecutors are still investigating the case, Lee said that they had no further comment on the matter.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Ching-hua (李慶華) told the legislature's Organic Laws and Statutes Committee yesterday morning that a reliable source told him that the president had wired NT$20 million (US$625,000) to China-based businessman Kung Chin-yuan (龔金源).
The legislator claimed that the money came from President Chen's special allowance fund and was actually used to invest in real estate in China.
Lee Ching-hua said President Chen had showed a receipt for the amount to Eric Chen and that he would be happy to meet with Eric Chen to discuss the matter.
Lee Ching-Hua said he had double-checked his sources and was willing to put his political career on the line.
"If what I say is wrong, I'll resign as a legislator," he said. "But if President Chen continues to lie about the fund, he should resign as the president."
President Chen has claimed that part of the fund was used to pay secret agents or informants involved in a diplomatic mission code named "The South Route Project" (
Lee Ching-hua yesterday criticized President Chen for lying about the use of the fund and said he suspected that President Chen had a close relationship with Kung and had used him to embezzle money from the fund.
Lee Ching-hua said Kung was appointed by President Chen when he was Taipei mayor as the city's representative in its sister city, Dallas.
After Chen was elected president in 2000, Kung was assigned by the Ministry of Finance as a representative of state shareholders at Taiwan Business Bank in July 2000, Lee Ching-hua claimed, adding that after Kung's mother passed away, President Chen had attended her funeral in June 2004.
In December last year, Kung was appointed by the ministry as a representative of public shareholders at First Financial Holding Company, Lee Ching-hua 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:
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