Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) might be indicted again because prosecutors are collecting evidence from overseas regarding his alleged money-laundering activities in Singapore while in office, prosecutors said yesterday.
Sources said prosecutors with the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Panel (SIP) are cooperating with Singapore’s judicial authorities in investigating several bank accounts managed by Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英), then Lee’s aide, in a bid to track the money that was allegedly laundered by the former president. Local media have reported that former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), on Sept. 5, 2008, while under investigation for corruption, offered prosecutors evidence purporting to show Lee’s involvment in laundering about US$50 million while serving as president from 1988 to 2000. SIP spokesman Chen Hung-ta (陳宏達) said yesterday Chen’s accusation against Lee was being probed by SIP prosecutors and that five of Lee’s former security agents — Chen Kuo-sheng (陳國勝), Lee Tsung-jen (李宗仁), Cheng Kuang-lin(鄭光麟), Liao Sung-ching(廖松青) and Lee Chih-chung (李志中) — have been prohibited from leaving the country since Oct. 5, 2008, for allegedly opening overseas bank accounts used in the alleged money laundering.
Chen Hung-ta said the SIP recently asked Singapore’s judicial authorities for information on bank accounts allegedly used for money laundering in accordance with a judicial mutual assistance agreement between the two countries.
“Taiwanese prosecutors are still working on the case, which is separate from the recent embezzlement indictment against Lee,” the sources said.
Lee was indicted on Thursday by SIP prosecutors on charges of embezzling US$7.79 million in national security funds to create a private non-profit organization. However, no jail term is being sought for Lee, 88, because of his advanced age.
In a speech at a fund-raising event on Friday evening sponsored by the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), Lee professed innocence and said: “Even if there is no justice in this world, God will let justice take its course.”
“Should I die,” he added, “there will be millions of people like me who will continue striving for Taiwan’s sovereignty and democracy.”
Meanwhile, the SIP deneid that Chen Shui-bian, who succeeded Lee in 2000, blew the whistle on Lee’s suspected national security fund embezzlement. Local media reported that Chen brought up Lee’s alleged activities in a court hearing for his own corruption charges in September 2008. Chen Shui-bian’s daughter, Chen Hsing-yu (陳幸妤), after a visit to her father on Friday, also quoted her father as saying Lee’s embezzlement indictment has nothing to do with him.
Chen is now serving a 17-and-a-half year jail term on corruption charges at Taipei Prison.
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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