Former Hsinchu Science Park head James Lee (李界木) yesterday again gave contradictory statements about receiving money in a land deal related to former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) corruption case.
The Taipei District Court found Lee and former first lady Wu Shu-jen’s (吳淑珍) friend Tsai Ming-che (蔡銘哲) guilty of embezzling money from a development company to pave the way for construction of the Hsinchu Science Park.
MIDDLEMEN
Prosecutors said they acted as middlemen by introducing the company to the former first couple, who have been accused of taking kickbacks in exchange for allowing the science park to purchase a plot of land in Longtan (龍潭), Taoyuan County, from the company at a price prosecutors said was unreasonably high.
At the pre-trial hearing held by Taiwan High Court judges yesterday, Lee confessed to the charges against him in the hope of earning a more lenient sentence.
However, Lee insisted that although he accepted the NT$30 million (US$1 million) as a “commission” at first, later he felt the kickback was wrong and donated part of the money to non-profit organizations.
CONFESS?
He argued in his defense that because the money did not pay for him to streamline the land deal, there was no issue of corruption. His contradictory statements caused Presiding Judge Teng Chen-chiu (鄧振球) to repeatedly ask him whether he was still choosing to confess.
On Sept. 11, Lee was sentenced by the district court to six years in prison and lost his civil rights for three years. Tsai Ming-che was sentenced to two years in prison and five years probation.
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:
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