The Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted former Taiwan Sugar Corp (Taisugar) chairman Wu Nai-jen (吳乃仁) and former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Hong Chi-chang (洪奇昌) on a charge of breach of trust, saying that Wu abused his power to sell Taisugar land cheaply to Chunlung Co after being lobbied by Hong.
Pan Chung-hao (潘忠豪) of Chunlung, a long-time supporter of Hong, rented land from Taisugar in Taichung and Changhua counties and in Taichung City. The indictment said Chunlung expressed its wish to buy the land in 2003 and Hong lobbied Wu to approve the sale.
Taisugar staff said the deal violated regulations, but Wu was said to have overruled objections and told staff to approve the sale.
Following Wu’s instructions, Taisugar estimated the land’s market value was around NT$780 million (US$23.7 million), but because that was lower than the Assessed Present Value, it was suggested that the sales price should be set at NT$870 million. The land evaluation group at Taisugar’s Yuemei plant later suggested a value of around NT$600 million, the indictment said.
Wu requested that the case not be reviewed by the company’s land resource and utilization committee as was normal practice, but submitted it directly to the board, the indictment said, adding that Wu, using expected annual losses of NT$700 million to NT$800 million as an excuse, said it was necessary to complete the sale before the end of the year and set the price at NT$623.87 million.
The company bought the land for NT$626.88 million. When land increment tax was deducted, Taisugar earned NT$460 million on the deal, said the indictment.
The indictment said that although Wu and Hong have both contributed to Taiwan’s democracy, they did not follow the law and caused Taisugar to incur losses. Prosecutors suggested the court should issue them with heavy sentences.
Wu, who currently serves as DPP secretary-general, said yesterday through a spokesperson that he has no monetary relationship with Chunlung.
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater