The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a verdict acquitting Far Eastern Group chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) in the Sogo ownership scandal, while former Waterland Financial Holding Co chairman Walter Lin (林華德) was sentenced to two years in prison.
Lin is expected to begin serving his jail term soon.
Hsu, Lin and former Pacific Distribution Investment Co chairman Lee Heng-lung (李恆隆) were indicted for forgery and breach of trust by Taipei prosecutors in 2006 for their roles in a management takeover of the Pacific Sogo Department Store in September 2002.
The court said Lin, who agreed to help former Sogo chairman Chang Chi-min (章啟明) secure capital for Sogo when it was experiencing financial difficulties, instead secretly helped Hsu gain ownership of the store in 2004, which constituted a breach of trust.
The court said that as Lin secretly contacted Hsu to discuss the ownership of Sogo, there was insufficient evidence to show that Hsu knew Lin and Chang had an agreement on financial assistance.
Far Eastern Group injected capital into one of Sogo's subsidiary firms, Pacific Distribution Investment Co, and then took control of a majority of Sogo's shares in a manner that is legal and normal business practice in the eyes of the law, the court said.
Hsu's attorney, Yang Cheng-hsien (楊政憲), told reporters outside the court that Far Eastern Group was pleased with the final ruling and hoped the long-term dispute had been brought to a conclusion.
Lin was the only defendant found guilty by the court, while Lee's case is still pending.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
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: