Former presidential adviser Wu Li-pei (吳澧培), who was found not guilty in a money-laundering case, yesterday filed lawsuits against two prosecutors and two judges for what he called their abuse of judicial powers and political persecution.
Accompanied by his lawyers, Wu filed lawsuits against former Special Investigation Division (SID) prosecutors Chen Yun-nan (陳雲南) and Tsai Tsun-hsi (蔡宗熙) for malicious prosecution and judges Tsai Shou-hsun (蔡守訓) and Lee Ying-hao (李英豪) for malicious accusation.
“The lawsuits may not end up with the results I want, but it’s imperative for me to stand up against the prosecutorial abuse and political persecution after the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) return to power in 2008,” Wu told a press conference before filing the lawsuits at the Taipei District Court.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
The former presidential adviser said that he was subpoenaed as a witness in another case, but ended up being indicted on money-laundering charges “simply because the prosecutors said I had a close relationship with former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).”
The prosecutors appealed the case without any new evidence until “a judge with a conscience” cleared the charges against him in October 2011, three years after he was indicted, Wu said.
“Those who abused their judicial power should be held accountable,” he said.
The lawsuits were part of an effort by a group of self-proclaimed “judicial victims,” who said they were victims of political persecution aimed at former officials of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, to highlight the necessity of judicial reform.
There have been at least 14 cases in which one or more former officials in the DPP administration were charged with corruption, but were later found not guilty, the group said.
The group has named 17 prosecutors in five cases so far and said they would continue to file lawsuits in the coming weeks.
Former DPP legislator Wu Ming-min (吳明敏) filed lawsuits accusing three investigators in the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau of subornation of perjury last week in Taichung and former Tainan mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財), who has been found not guilty in a corruption case, is scheduled to file a similar lawsuit on April 1.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,