Former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) yesterday denied taking bribes and profiteering in the first pre-trial hearing for a second wave of charges brought against her.
She said that she received NT$300 million (US$9.2 million) in political donations from former Chinatrust Financial Holding Co vice chairman Jeffrey Koo Jr (辜仲諒) and admitted that she violated the Political Donation Act (政治獻金法) because she did not report them.
However, she denied that the money she took from Koo and former Taipei Financial Center Corp chairwoman Diana Chen (陳敏薰) were bribes or illegal gains, adding that she didn’t use the money for personal expenses.
PHOTO: CNA
On May 5, prosecutors said they had concluded the second part of the investigation into the former first family. They charged former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his wife with taking bribes, profiteering and violating the Political Donation Act.
Prosecutors accused the former president and his wife of accepting NT$10 million in bribes from Diana Chen.
Prosecutors alleged that Diana Chen gave the former first lady NT$10 million to secure the presidency of Grand Cathay Securities Corp (大華證券).
The indictment also accused the couple of inappropriately taking NT$300 million in political donations from Koo.
Prosecutors accused the former president of using election campaign funds and secret foreign relations as excuses to ask Koo for donations, which the couple then pocketed.
Separately, in response to her daughter, Chen Hsing-yu (陳幸妤), being charged with perjury on Wednesday, Wu told reporters: “I respect the judicial system.”
TV footage showed her grim-faced yesterday morning as she prepared to take the high-speed rail to Taipei for the hearing.
Before Wednesday, Chen Hsing-yu had been the only immediate family member of Chen Shui-bian not named as a defendant in relation to the former first family’s alleged money laundering activities.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching