Wang Ding-yu (王定宇), a Greater Tainan councilor accused of misusing charity funds, yesterday filed charges against Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) for defamation, alleging that Jiang spread false information.
Accompanied by local politicians and Typhoon Morakot victims, Wang maintained that no wrongdoing took place, even as questions continued about whether he illegally raised money for disaster relief.
Wang has denied he had actively sought NT$3.25 million (US$112,000) in donations to help Typhoon Morakot victims, which would be in violation of charitable donation regulations, calling the accusations politically motivated.
The five-term councilor last month won the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative nominations against a sitting legislator, Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅), who Wang said masterminded the controversy. Wang sued Lee on Thursday.
At his office yesterday, Wang let reporters inspect his financial records, including checkbook and donation receipts he said were proof that more than NT$3.29 million was spent on disaster relief — more than the amount originally donated.
“Starting today, I will be suing for each and every libelous comment [against me], whether on the Internet, through fax or by erroneous reports in the media,” he wrote in a statement on his Web site.
He accused Jiang of discrediting his reputation after the minister mistakenly said on Thursday that Wang had applied for a non-profit Typhoon Morakot charity that took NT$12 million in donations, but only ended up spending one-third the amount.
The charity was later found to be run by former presidential office secretary-general Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟).
Ministry officials said afterward it had been a “slip of the tongue.”
At Wang’s office yesterday, supporters gathered outside, saying they wanted to offer him their encouragement, even as prosecutors said on Thursday they had opened an investigation into the case.
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:
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