The Supreme Court on Thursday demanded that a perjury case involving former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) be retried in the Taiwan High Court.
The High Court in August found Chen not guilty of inducing his aides to give false testimony with regards to his alleged misuse of a special state affairs fund.
The Supreme Court’s retrial demand came after an appeal by prosecutors.
The court said the high court failed to clearly state why Chen was ruled not guilty.
The High Court’s ruling in August overturned the one handed down by the Taipei District Court in July last year, when Chen was sentenced to two months in jail.
Chen was accused of abetting Ma Yung-cheng (馬永成) and Lin Teh-hsun (林德訓) — who headed Chen’s office at different times during his tenure as president from 2000 to 2008 — to make false statements when prosecutors looked into his alleged misuse of the fund in 2006.
The prosecutors found that Chen had allegedly asked Ma and Lin to tell prosecutors that the state affairs fund was used in secret diplomatic operations rather than siphoned off into the first family’s pockets.
Chen also allegedly instructed the pair to deny that his wife, Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), had used invoices provided by other people to claim reimbursements from the fund, according to the prosecutors.
The High Court found that before Lin gave his testimony on Aug. 8, 2006, the prosecutors did not inform him that he had the right to refuse to testify.
Under the circumstances, it did not constitute perjury even if Lin lied to prosecutors that day, the high court said.
Moreover, there was no evidence proving that Chen had instructed Lin and Ma to give false testimony, the court said.
Chen is currently serving a 18-and-a-half-year sentence for corruption.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
The National Immigration Agency has banned two Chinese from returning to Taiwan, after they published social media content it described as disrespectful to national sovereignty. The agency imposed a two-month ban on a Chinese man surnamed Liang (梁) and a permanent ban on a woman surnamed Yang (楊), an influencer with 23 million followers, in October last year and last week respectively. Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) yesterday said on the sidelines of a legislative meeting that Chinese visitors to Taiwan are required to comply with the rules and regulations governing their entry permits. The government has handled the ban and
RSS