Taoyuan prosecutors yesterday indicted eight heath officials, 15 doctors and 25 businessmen on corruption charges.
Prosecutors said in the indictments that the 48 — including Hwang Kun-chang (黃焜璋), former head of the Hospital Administration Committee under the Department of Health (DOH) — are suspected of having offered or taken bribes in several medical supply deals.
The prosecutors accused Huang and the heads or deputy heads of DOH-run hospitals in Hsinchu, Taichung, Chiayi, Penghu and New Taipei City (新北市), as well as doctors, of receiving kickbacks for purchasing pharmaceutical or medical devices from suppliers.
The other indicted officials include former Keelung Hospital president Lee Yuan-fang (李源芳), former Losheng Sanatorium Hospital president Lee Nai-shu (李乃樞), former Hsinchu Hospital president Chen Wen-chung (陳文鍾), former Taichung Hospital president Shao Kuo-ning (邵國寧), former Chiayi Hospital president Huang Lung-te (黃龍德), former Penghu Hospital president Lee Ming-chieh (李明杰) and former Taipei Hospital vice president Wang Chun-liang (王炯琅).
Prosecutors asked for a 25-year jail term for Huang, who allegedly received NT$3.5 million (US$118,000) in bribes and who showed no signs of remorse during the investigation process. They also said he should be fined NT$7 million.
Commenting on the indictment, DOH Deputy Minister Chiang Hung-che (江宏哲) expressed regrets.
Chiang also pledged reforms, saying the case had severely damaged the DOH’s image and the public’s impression of the agency.
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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