The Shilin District Court yesterday released former director of the National Palace Museum Shih Shou-chien (石守謙) on NT$1.2 million (US$40,000) bail after prosecutors detained him on Tuesday.
Shih and 14 others were taken into custody in May 2007, released on bail of NT$500,000 in July 2007 and indicted one month later on corruption charges relating to the renovation of the museum’s main exhibition hall.
Prosecutors searched Shih’s home on Tuesday and after allegedly finding new evidence in the case, brought Shih, former museum deputy director Lin Po-ting (林柏亭) and former executive secretary Chang Hui-ching (張惠菁) in for questioning.
The court set bail for Lin at NT$1 million and released Chang without bail.
Prosecutors said in the indictment that “as a director of the museum, Shih did not protect the nation’s funds, but inflated the budgets for architect Lo Hsien-hua (羅興華) and other firms and therefore he should receive a heavy sentence.”
Prosecutors allege that the officials illegally aided two other companies in a land conservation project to protect the museum.
At issue was a NT$385 million renovation project. After submitting its project proposal to the legislature, the museum then altered more than 1,000 specifications in the reconstruction plans, inflating the budget to NT$600 million.
The renovation of the museum’s main exhibition hall began in 2002 and was completed last year.
In April, the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee requested an investigation into the ongoing construction of the museum’s branch in Chiayi.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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