Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Shen Lyu-hsun (沈呂巡) yesterday demanded a new investigation into a scandal in which he was accused of swindling more than NT$4 million (US$123,000) in government funds by falsely reporting rental expenses during his post in Geneva.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said the case could be reopened to examine whether there were any procedural flaws, but Shen would have to first file an appeal.
The career diplomat of three decades told reporters the allegations had damaged his reputation and ruined his aging father’s health, who, he said, suffered a stroke upon hearing the news.
Shen was slapped with a demerit on the eve of last year’s presidential election when it was discovered that the Geneva representative office was smaller than reported and Shen, who headed the mission, had paid more than NT$4 million too much in office rent for the four years since 2004.
IN CAHOOTS
Some reporters and pan-green legislators accused Shen of being in cahoots with the office space’s landlord, but he vehemently denied the allegations.
He said that not only did he not pocket any money, but he single-handedly convinced the landlord to hand back the extra money and reduce the rent by 20 percent.
“I was the one that reported the discrepancy to the ministry,” he said in his defense.
LEAKED
When asked who he thought might have leaked the story and if it reflected political infighting within the ministry, Shen said he had an idea who the person was, but that the man had left MOFA for another government department.
“It is someone that does not want me to come back,” he said, without elaborating.
Shen said he hoped a new investigation could be launched to look into the matter because he was not given an adequate chance to explain his side of the story when the ministry conducted its internal disciplinary review of the case.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,