Tsai Ming-che (蔡銘哲), a friend of former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), yesterday testified that he did not contact former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in a case involving allegations that Chen took kickbacks in a land deal.
Defense witness Tsai was summoned to appear at the Taipei District Court for questioning about his involvement in the 2004 sale of a plot of land in Longtan (龍潭), Taoyuan County.
Prosecutors allege that as Tsai was a close friend of the former first lady, he had easy access to the presidential residence. Prosecutors say Tsai helped the Chen family solicit bribes and lined his own pockets with a portion of the money as part of a deal between the government-run Hsinchu Science Park and Dayu Development Corp.
Tsai told defense attorney Shih Yi-ling (石宜琳) that he gave former Hsinchu Science Park chief James Lee (李界木) a commission for helping to close the deal and that he had only contacted Wu, his brother Tsai Ming-chieh (蔡銘杰) and Taiwan Cement Corp (台泥) chairman Leslie Koo (辜成允).
He said he never had any contact with the former president during the entire time the land deal took place.
Prosecutors allege that in a meeting at the Presidential Office between the former president, Lee and other government officials, Chen proposed that the council first rent the plot of land, then eventually buy it and include it as part of the science park. The idea was for Wu to collect NT$400 million (US$12 million) in bribes, prosecutors allege.
However, Tsai told the court that NT$510 million in commission was split up only among those who were involved in the deal and that the former first lady received NT$300 million.
This contradicted what former Chinatrust Financial Holding Co vice chairman Jeffrey Koo Jr (辜仲諒) told the court.
Koo previously told prosecutors that after the land deal was completed, Wu said to him: “I think Tsai Ming-chieh stole money from me” when she only received NT$200 million. Koo said Wu was very angry because she believed she should have received NT$400 million in commission.
Chen is charged with embezzling NT$104 million from the presidential “state affairs” fund, receiving bribes in connection with a government land deal and laundering part of the funds by wiring the money to Swiss bank accounts.
He has repeatedly denied the charges, saying the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is persecuting him because of his anti-China views.
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
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
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,