The Control Yuan impeached former transportation minister Lin Ling-san (林陵三) on Tuesday for allegedly investing illegally in Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) and its operations.
The body voted to impeach Lin by a 9-3 margin and censured the Executive Yuan, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) and the Public Construction Commission for condoning the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration’s direct and indirect investment in the THSRC.
As Lin is no longer a government official, the impeachment will not have any direct consequences for him, but the ruling can serve as a warning to incumbent officials dealing with the high-speed railway, the Control Yuan said.
Control Yuan member Li Ful-dien (李復甸) said Lin, who also doubled as chairman of an MOTC foundation in charge of Taiwan’s aviation industry development, allowed the foundation to invest NT$4.5 billion (US$136 million) in the high-speed rail venture in violation of its bylaws.
Li, one of the authors of the impeachment, said the foundation had received NT$300 million (US$9.1 million) in dividends from THSRC in 2005 but nothing since because of the high-speed rail company’s operating losses.
When THSRC was chosen to develop the high-speed rail line under a build-operate-transfer (BOT) model, it was not allowed to draw on government funds.
But Li said the company had received NT$39.4 billion in direct or indirect investment from the DPP administration, an amount worth more than 37 percent of THSRC’s equity, which was tantamount to “seriously reneging on the BOT spirit.”
Li said the impeachment would be referred to the Ministry of Justice for further investigation.
Meanwhile, Control Yuan member Yeh Yao-peng (葉耀鵬), another author of the impeachment, said the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had also failed to deal with THSRC’s irregularities.
“The administration is being kidnapped by THSRC because it doesn’t dare let the railway company go bankrupt,” Yeh said.
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