Control Yuan member Li Fuldien (李復甸) on Sunday reiterated his demand that Secretary-General Chen Tsung-ming (陳聰明) increase manpower in the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office’s Special Investigation Panel (SIP).
If Chen refused to do so, the Control Yuan might impeach him, Li said.
The Supreme Prosecutor’s Office was censured by the Control Yuan on Feb. 11 over the SIP’s handling of legal cases involving former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his family.
The Control Act (監察法) stipulates that the prosecutor’s office must respond to the censure within two months.
One of the issues brought up in the censure was a shortage in SIP manpower.
“It’s been quite a while since the censure was released. In accordance with the Control Act, the Control Yuan is entitled to impeach [Chen] if his agency does not comply with the censure recommendations or if it does not give a satisfactory explanation within two months,” Li said.
The SIP has been short of manpower, as the percentage of unsolved cases pending investigation was 57 percent at the end of last year, involving a total of 192 high-level officials, Li said.
Meanwhile, Li dismissed a story in Sunday’s Chinese-language China Times, which said that he had questioned why SIP prosecutors did not intend to bring Huang Fang-yen (黃芳彥), the former first family’s physician, back home from the US.
Huang has been listed as a defendant in the former first family’s alleged money-laundering case.
“I am not aware of any Control Yuan members launching an investigation into why SIP prosecutors failed to arrest Huang,” Li said.
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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