Taipei prosecutors yesterday questioned former officials from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) and Ministry of Finance, as well as several bank officials, to determine whether there were any irregularities in the bank’s purchase of special shares in Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) in 2002 and 2005.
Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office spokesman Wang Wen-te (王文德) said former MOTC Bureau of High Speed Rail director Ho Nuan-hsuan (何煖軒), as well as former Bank of Taiwan presidents Chen Mu-tsai (陳木在) and Lee Sheng-yann (李勝彥), were questioned as witnesses.
Wang said that Gary Tseng (曾國烈), former director-general of the Ministry of Finance’s Bureau of Monetary Affairs, and Chang Ming-daw (張明道), a deputy -director-general of the bureau, were also summoned for questioning as witnesses, but failed to show up. Former subordinates were questioned instead, Wang said.
The Ministry of Finance in 2002 amended financial regulations giving the nation’s eight banks the legal means to buy THSRC special shares in 2002 and 2005. The purchases were meant to prop up the financially troubled THSRC.
Wang said prosecutors were trying to determine whether the amendment and the share purchases were legal, adding that they may have involved breach of trust.
Prosecutors and investigators in September last year raided the MOTC and THSRC to retrieve documents as part of a probe into whether THSRC had engaged in illegal deals.
Former THSRC chairwoman Nita Ing (殷琪) has previously been questioned by prosecutors over the matter.
Prosecutors said they also suspected that some individuals may have illegally profited from the rising price of property near stations along the high-speed railway line.
The government owns almost 40 percent of the company’s shares.
Construction of the high-speed rail system cost more than NT$400 billion (US$13.3 billion), of which more than NT$300 billion came in the form of syndicated loans.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods