Minister of Justice Morley Shih (
"Among all kinds of corruption cases, corporate corruption like the Rebar Asia Pacific Group case impacts on our society the hardest," Shih said.
"Many innocent lives were turned upside down just because some people stole money from companies. We cannot tolerate this," Shih said.
Shih was attending a seminar with foreign law enforcement officers, government officials and university professors, from Singapore, South Korea, Australia and Malaysia.
He made the remarks when he was approached by reporters at the seminar.
The minister said that, because of the seminar, he realized that fighting corruption is a focus for many other foreign law enforcement officers.
He said that Taiwan is learning from the experience of Singapore and South Korea and has begun amending its laws.
The minister said that lawmakers have suggested making new laws to punish government officials if they possess any personal assets which they cannot clearly explain.
"There are always allegations that government officials could be involved whenever there is a corporate corruption case," the minister said.
"In addition to focusing our crackdown on corporate corruption cases, making sure that government officials are clean is also very important," Shih said.
Shih said that he also took advantage of the chance to talk to his foreign counterparts and demonstrate that Taiwan was more than willing to contribute and share its experience in cracking down on corruption.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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