Former Waterland Financial Holding chairman Walter Lin (林華德) reported to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday morning to begin a two-year prison sentence for his role in the Sogo ownership scandal.
Dressed casually in a light gray jacket as he spoke to reporters, he pledged to continue fighting the charges and expressed regret that he would no longer be able to visit his wife, Sophie Yeh (葉素菲), who is serving 14 years in prison for her role in defrauding NT$7 billion (US$227 million) from a chipmaker she once headed.
“The ruling was not fair,” he said, adding that the justice system was flawed because the entire case “had nothing to do with me.”
He said that he had already launched an extraordinary appeal.
In 2006, Lin was accused of forgery and a breach of trust by prosecutors for secretly helping Far Eastern Group chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) gain ownership of the Sogo department store chain, which is one of the nation’s largest and most prominent. He had initially promised former Sogo chairman Chang Chi-min (章啟明) that he would help the financially struggling chain secure capital.
Far Eastern Group injected capital into one of Sogo’s subsidiary companies, Pacific Distribution Investment, and then took control of most of Sogo’s shares, securing ownership of the company in 2004.
Hsu and Lee Heng-lung (李恆隆), the former Pacific Distribution Investment chairman, who were both initially included in the indictment were later acquitted after the courts ruled that the two had engaged in normal business practices.
An appeal seeking to reverse the acquittal was rejected by the Taiwan High Court last month.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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