A former banker was ordered by a prosecutor yesterday to have a medical check at a public hospital before it could be decided whether he could postpone serving a jail term.
Prosecutor Liu Cheng-wu (劉承武) asked Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英), a former chairman of the China Development Industrial Bank, to check into the Yang Ming branch of Taipei City Hospital to have an ultrasonic scan on his heart and a computerized axis tomograph of his brain.
The prosecutor gave the instructions after visiting Liu Tai-ying at the private Ching Sheng General Clinic, where the former banker was admitted late on Tuesday.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Liu Tai-ying was subpoenaed to report to the prosecutor on Wednesday to begin serving a 22-month jail term handed down by the court for his siphoning off of NT$37 million (US$1.2 million) from two Chinese Nationalist Patry (KMT)-run firms when he was chief of the KMT Business Management Committee in 1998.
Instead of showing up at the prosecutor’s office on Wednesday, Liu Tai-ying sent his son to inform the prosecutor that he had collapsed late on Tuesday after moderate drinking with friends and was unable to begin his sentence.
His son presented a medical report issued by Ching Sheng to back the claim that Liu Tai-ying’s condition was serious and that he should be hospitalized for the time being for observation.
Prosecutor Liu said after visiting Liu Tai-ying at Ching Sheng yesterday that the former banker was suffering from hypertension, but was conscious.
Noting that Liu Tai-ying pleaded illness only after his request to take a postpone serving his sentence was rejected, the prosecutor said he would seek a second opinion on whether the banker could serve his jail term.
Liu has been implicated in a number of criminal cases arising from his service in the KMT and the 22-month sentence was handed down in the first case in which he had exhausted all legal avenues of appeal.
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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