The Taitung District Prosecutors’ Office said on Friday it would indict niether Taitung County Commissioner Kuang Li-chen (鄺麗貞) nor the 13 others who accompanied her on a trip to Europe last year, on corruption charges.
District prosecutors launched an investigation last year after receiving a report from a county government employee that the nine business trips Kuang made abroad using public funds since April 2006 were “private and leisurely” in nature.
Controversy also arose when county residents discovered that Kuang was in Europe instead of at the county’s emergency operation center when a typhoon hit Taiwan in July last year, killing one in Taitung.
Thirteen county officials and township mayors accompanied Kuang on the trip.
Chief prosecutor Feng Cheng (馮成) said that prosecutors did not find anything illegal with Kuang’s trip.
Applications to use public funds on the trip followed proper procedure, the officials on the trip met to assign tasks during the trip and they gathered information relevant to development of tourism on the trip, Feng said, adding that prosecutors did not find that any of the 13 officials on the delegation had any intention to engage in illegal activities.
Feng said the job of the district prosecutors’ office was only to investigate whether Kuang and other officials on the delegation broke the law during their trips; determining whether administrative errors were committed during the trips was not part of its remit, Feng said.
He said that the power to launch a probe into administrative errors rests in the hands of the Control Yuan and the Commission on the Disciplinary Sanctions of Functionaries.
Kuang, a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), thanked the judiciary for “proving my innocence,” but did not say whether she would run for re-election in the year-end county commissioner election.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS