A Sports Affairs Council (SAC) official said yesterday that the nation’s professional baseball league would not fold over the latest match-fixing scandal.
“Professional baseball is the engine of baseball in Taiwan, so we will not let the professional baseball league fold,” SAC Deputy Director Tzeng Tsan-pao (曾參寶) said at the legislature.
Lee Wen-pin (李文彬), secretary-general of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL), said he was not aware of any plans to shut down the CPBL.
“We will continue to prepare for next year’s games. As for whether some teams might disappear because of the scandal, I cannot speak for them,” he told reporters.
The CPBL was founded in 1989 and has four teams.
In recent years, it has been mired in repeated match-fixing scandals.
The latest of these erupted on Monday, a day after the Brother Elephants lost 5-2 to the Uni-President Lions in the CPBL championship.
Prosecutors have questioned more than a dozen players from three teams in the scandal.
On Wednesday, prosecutors listed Brother Elephants players Wu Pao-hsien (吳保賢), Wang Jing-li (王勁力), Wang Chun-tai (汪竣泰), Liu Yu-chan (柳裕展), Li Hao-ren (李濠任) and Tsao Chin-hui (曹錦輝), along with La New Bears pitcher Chang Chih-chia (張誌家) and Hsieh Chia-hsien (謝佳賢) of the Sinon Bulls, as defendants in a game-fixing case under investigation by Banciao District prosecutors.
The Banciao District Court yesterday ruled against detaining Wu and Wang Jing-li after prosecutors requested their detention.
Cheng Hsin-hung (鄭鑫宏), a spokesperson for the district prosecutors’ office, said prosecutors had sought to detain Wu and Wang because they might otherwise collude with witnesses.
However, prosecutors respect the district court’s decision, Cheng said.
Prosecutors said they did not request to detain the other six baseball players because the defendants had cooperated with investigators and agreed to return for questioning whenever necessary — not because prosecutors believed the six were not involved in game-fixing.
Prosecutors said they had telephone records proving that Tsao, Chang and the others were in contact with Tsai Cheng-yi (蔡政宜), the alleged head of a criminal gang nicknamed the “Windshield Wipers,” and his middlemen.
The players allegedly met Tsai or a middleman before throwing a game.
The players have denied fixing games, although Tsao admitted to meeting the Windshield Wipers. Some reports claimed Tsao and other players accepted bribes in the form of drinks with female escorts.
Although the district court released Wu and Wang without bail, the eight defendants are prohibited from leaving the country to ensure they do not flee the investigation and legal proceedings.
Prosecutors yesterday questioned four more baseball players, including Elephants catcher Kuo Yi-feng (郭一峰).
They are planning to question more people as they continue their probe into the case.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY DPA
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS