The National Communications Commission (NCC) members who took part in Tuesday's review of the Broadcasting Corporation of China's application to transfer its shares to four companies will be referred to the judiciary, a government spokesman said yesterday.
Government Information Office Minister Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) said that the referral would take place within a week at the latest.
"In the meantime, [the government] doesn't rule out the possibility of suspending the authority of NCC members," Shieh told a press conference after an inter-departmental meeting was held on how to react to the approval.
PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DE, TAIPEI TIMES
Shieh said that government officials had ascertained during the meeting that the four companies along with four other companies claiming to be shareholders of one of the first four companies, were "front companies" owned by [former UFO Radio chairman] Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) and his wife Liang Lei (梁蕾).
"As a result, the transaction was illegal and the NCC members are thus under suspicion of dereliction of duty and aiding Jaw," Shieh said.
The NCC on Tuesday approved the BCC's application to transfer its shares to four companies and another application to install Jaw as chairman of its board after the BCC promised it would unconditionally return two radio frequencies to the government.
Shieh said that Jaw established the eight companies as a means to circumvent a regulation of the Enforcement Rule of the Broadcasting and Television Law (
"Jaw actually owns about 40 percent to 50 percent of the BCC's shares," Shieh said.
Shieh said that officials with the Financial Supervisory Commission, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Taipei Business Administration Office told the inter-departmental meeting that they had expressed doubts about the eight companies to the NCC, but the NCC members didn't bother to investigate the facts behind the deal.
In response, NCC spokesperson Howard Shyr (
He said that what Shieh had mentioned in his statement about the registration and the shareholders' meetings are regulated by the Corporation Law (
Shyr emphasized that the commission had been as thorough as possible when reviewing the case.
For example, he said, the commission had garnered official replies from the High Prosecutors' Office and the High Court indicating that none of the proposed persons in charge had any committed any criminal acts.
He said that the Ministry of Economic Affairs had also informed the commission in March that they could not find any problems with the four shareholding companies.
Shyr said that the BCC has promised to fulfill every requirement in its agreement with the commission. If the Executive Yuan finds anything inappropriate in how the case was handled, it should gain a thorough understanding by consulting with the different administrative organizations in charge.
"Before Shieh, there were seven other GIO ministers, and none of them managed to get the two frequencies back from the BCC," he said. "The commission got the BCC to unconditionally return them."
Earlier yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Yu Shyi-kun urged the Cabinet to relieve NCC Chairman Su Yeong-ching (蘇永欽) of his duties, charging him with malfeasance and profiting the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
"The KMT obtained its assets through unjust means. It is a consensus among the public that these assets should be recovered," Yu said.
Yu said he had reported the KMT's controversial sale of its stolen assets to the Ministry of Justice last November, but the ministry's Special Investigation Division had not yet looked into the controversies.
Yu said that the second stage of the party's campaign for a referendum on recovering the KMT's stolen assets had garnered over 1.4 million signatures.
The Referendum Law (公投法) states that the signatures of 5 percent of the nation's eligible voters, or 830,000 names, must be collected before a referendum can take place.
The DPP campaign had collected 1,424,478 signatures as of Tuesday, Yu said.
Yu said the party would submit the signatures to the Cabinet for verification, adding that the party hopes the referendum can be held along with next year's legislative or presidential election.
Additional reporting by Flora Wang
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
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
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