Not enough evidence was found to indict Taiwanese diplomat Jacqueline Liu (劉姍姍) over abuse of her maids in the US and violating the Criminal Code, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday.
The office closed the case and described it as a civil dispute because insufficient evidence was presented to support criminal charges against Liu, who was the former director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Kansas City, Missouri.
Liu was accused of abusing her two Filipino maids in the US, and faced potential charges of embezzlement, fraud and violating the Human Trafficking Prevention Act (人口販運防制法).
Liu had been suspected of embezzlement because she had signed a contract with the maids to give them a monthly salary of US$1,240, but only paid them US$450 a month.
However, prosecutors found that the amount Liu paid was the amount she reported back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for reimbursement, indicating she had not embezzled funds.
Regarding the accusations that Liu’s payment of only a fraction of the contracted amount constituted fraud, the maids had agreed to the monthly salary and to have accommodation, food and insurance expenses deducted from it, prosecutors said.
Since the maids had agreed to the conditions, Liu could not be indicted for fraud, prosecutors said, noting that the circumstances involved were more suited to a civil case than a criminal one.
An investigation by prosecutors also discovered that the US$1,240 contract provided by an official at Taiwan’s representative office in the Philippines who interviewed the maids was calculated in accordance with the minimum wage in the US and included insurance, local media reported.
As for the human trafficking charges and Liu restricting the maids’ freedom with three surveillance cameras, the cameras had actually been installed in the house before she was posted to the US, the reports said.
Liu was arrested by the FBI on Nov. 10 last year, and was detained for two months before entering a plea agreement.
Under the deal, she was ordered to pay US$80,044 in restitution to the two maids on Jan. 27, and was deported to Taiwan on Feb. 15. Liu was questioned by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Feb. 22. The case has prompted the ministry to review its employment system for foreign housekeepers in the homes of diplomats stationed overseas.
The Control Yuan last month impeached Liu after it completed its probe into her case and accused her of malfeasance for having hired a Chinese woman as a housekeeper in a move it said “raised national security concerns.”
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: