Prosecutors yesterday indicted former Ministry of National Defense deputy minister Ko Cheng-heng (柯承亨) and re-indicted former Bureau of Investigation director-general Yeh Sheng-mao (葉盛茂) on a charge of leaking confidential information.
The Taipei District Court sentenced Yeh to 10 years in prison last year for withholding information related to the former first family’s alleged money laundering activities and a separate charge of leaking confidential information.
The court found Yeh guilty of corruption, concealing a government file and leaking confidential information. He was indicted on Aug. 28 and detained on Oct. 6.
Because Yeh has appealed the verdict to the High Court, the re-indictment will be forwarded to the High Court for a combined trial.
Prosecutors accused Yeh of leaking documents regarding the former first family’s bank accounts, as well as correspondence from the Egmont Group regarding the former first family’s alleged money laundering activities.
The Egmont Group is an international group of financial intelligence units designed to tackle money laundering.
In October 2006, Supreme Prosecutor’s Office Special Investigation Panel prosecutor Chou Shih-yu (周士榆) visited Chou You-yi (周有義), director of the bureau’s Money Laundering Prevention Center, to get the latest update on an investigation into the former first family’s alleged money laundering.
Prosecutors believe that after Chou You-yi briefed Yeh on the investigation, Yeh faxed the documents to former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to keep him informed on the investigation’s progress.
Ko is also suspected of being connected to the information leak, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors last month questioned Ko, who is suspected of leaking classified documents regarding the presidential “state affairs fund” case to Chen.
Ko told prosecutors that he could not recall whether the documents were his because it was too long ago. However, prosecutors are convinced that he had the documents photocopied by his secretary, then sealed the documents and handed them to the former president.
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
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the