The Taiwan High Court announced yesterday that the verdict in Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou's (
The court yesterday finished hearing the case, in which Ma is accused of embezzling NT$11 million (US$333,000) from his special mayoral allowance during his eight years as Taipei mayor.
Ma criticized state prosecutors yesterday, saying he had been victimized.
"Prosecutors chose me as a target and indicted me," Ma told the court.
Ma said that prosecutors had completed nine investigations into the use of special allowances, but that only he had been indicted.
Officials are only required to account for half of their speciall allowance expenditures.
Ma said that the charitable donations he made during his term of office exceeded the special allowance funds he received. This, he said, meant that he had not embezzled any public funds.
However, prosecutors rejected this argument.
Ma told the court he was innocent and believed his name would be cleared.
Prosecutors allege that, between December 1998 and July last year, Ma wired half of his monthly special allowance -- NT$170,000 -- directly to a personal bank account.
In this way, prosecutors said that Ma had accumulated NT$11,176,227 in bank accounts belonging to himself and his wife.
Ma was indicted on Feb. 13, with the Taipei District Court delivering a not-guilty verdict on Aug. 14.
However, prosecutors appealed the case to the High Court.
During the first and second trials, Ma admitted he had taken half of his monthly special allowance for personal use. He said he believed government officials' special allowances should be treated as income, not as public funds.
The Taipei District Court decided that government officials' special allowances should be treated as a substantial subsidy -- as income -- and so found Ma not guilty of embezzling public funds.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai