Wu Shih-tsai (吳思材), a key suspect in the Papua New Guinea diplomatic fraud scandal, faces two years and four months behind bars after the Taipei District Court found him guilty yesterday on charges of forgery and defamation.
Wu has been in custody since May 6 and will remain so even if he decides to appeal the sentence, which he can do within 10 days of receiving the written verdict.
“Wu is a naturalized Singaporean and he is no longer a Taiwanese national. As a result, there is a fear that he would abscond if released. His detention shall continue,” Taipei District Court spokesman Huang Chun-min (黃俊明) said.
Wu and Ching Chi-ju (金紀玖), the other main suspect in the case, were commissioned in August 2006 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former National Security Council secretary-general Chiou I-jen (邱義仁) to act as intermediaries in an attempt to set up diplomatic relations with Papua New Guinea.
MISSING MONEY
The ministry later agreed to wire US$29.8 million to a bank account that had been opened by Wu and Ching at a branch of OCBC Bank in Singapore. The funds were to be transferred to the Papua New Guinea government once the two nations had signed a diplomatic communique.
Following the failure of the attempt in December 2006, the ministry asked for its money back. But Chin allegedly refused to return the funds and has since disappeared.
FALSIFIED STATEMENTS
Wu, when he returned to Taiwan, falsified bank statements and made up a story that he had been threatened by an unidentified gunman who told him to keep his mouth shut about the case and leave Taiwan as soon as possible.
Chiou, former minister of foreign affairs James Huang (黃志芳) and former deputy minister of national defense Ko Cheng-heng (柯承亨) all resigned over their involvement in the diplomatic scheme.
Ching, who is a US citizen, is believed to be at large in the US.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods