The office of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday said it requested that he and the media be present if the Special Investigation Panel (SIP) opened sealed documents seized from the former president’s office.
In a statement, the office said the SIP notified it on Sept. 16 that they should send someone to the SIP office that same morning to discuss the procedure for opening the 58 sealed cases taken from Chen’s office.
The office said it would send its manager, Chen Sung-shan (陳淞山), to negotiate in accordance with instructions he obtained from the former president when the two met last Friday.
Chen Sung-shan would also request that the former president be present, as well as his lawyer and the press, when the SIP opens the boxes, it said.
Dozens of investigators raided the former president’s current and former offices on Linyi Street and Guanqian Road respectively on Sept. 15 after allegations surfaced that he had illegally removed boxes of classified government documents from the Presidential Office when he left office two years ago.
Attention was first drawn to the issue in June after Chen Shui-bian’s staff wrote to the Presidential Office asking how they should handle 20 boxes of official documents they had found.
The Presidential Office asked in writing for the return of the documents, but on Aug. 10 and again on Aug. 31, Chen Shui-bian’s aides said they would have to consult with the former president to ask for his approval before the documents could be retuned.
Earlier this month, the Presidential Office took legal action to reclaim the documents, saying Chen Shui-bian could have breached security protocols and endangered national security if the boxes contained classified information.
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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