President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday approved the resignation of Fan Chen-chung (范振宗), one of his advisers, the Presidential Office said.
Fan, who was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in jail earlier in the day by the Hsinchu District Court on charges of corruption dating to his tenure as Hsinchu councilor between 1989 and 1997, offered to resign as an adviser to the president last Friday, Presidential spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said.
Fan was convicted of offering illegal profits to businessmen by allowing them to use a marketplace for other commercial uses.
Fan, formerly a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was appointed by former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) as Council of Agriculture minister in 2000. He quit the DPP last year.
Fan denied the charges and said he would appeal his conviction.
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
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