Prosecutors investigating more counts of money laundering against former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said yesterday they were close to concluding investigations and issuing indictments.
The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office’s Special Investigation Panel (SIP) said it was tying up loose ends and nearing the end of its investigation into additional counts of corruption and money laundering involving the Chen family, businesspeople and financial officers.
More than 20 people have been listed as defendants at different points of the investigation. Some defendants, however, including former China Steel Corp chairman Lin Wen-yuan (林文淵), will not be indicted because a majority of the prosecutors on the panel do not believe there was enough evidence to build a case that the defendants were criminally liable for their involvement in the Chen family’s alleged money-laundering activities.
Lin was suspected of helping the former first family launder funds. He was in charge of Chen’s campaign funds during the 2000 presidential election.
Prosecutors believe he helped the Chen family buy two pieces of real estate in 2007, then made tens of millions of NT dollars by selling the properties.
In Lin’s case, because the funds in question did not eventually make it into the former first family’s bank accounts, prosecutors deemed the evidence inadequate to prove that Lin helped the Chens launder money.
Among the other defendants are Yuanta Financial Holding Co president Victor Ma (馬維建), former Yuanta Securities Corp board member Tu Li-ping (杜麗萍) and chairwoman Judy Tu (杜麗莊), former China Development Financial Holding Corp president Angelo Koo (辜仲瑩) and former China Development Financial chief financial officer Sherie Chiu (邱德馨).
Prosecutors said that in addition to the former president, his wife Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), his son Chen Chih-chung (陳致中), his daughter-in-law Huang Jui-ching (黃睿靚) and some other family members, some businesspeople and financial officers may be indicted.
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
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,
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