Minister of Justice Lo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪) yesterday said that a task force set up to investigate the wiretapping controversy involving the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Division (SID) started operations yesterday and that she hoped a conclusion could be reached as soon as possible.
Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) said the task force has retrieved documents from the SID and the Taipei District Court on the wiretapping case. It will also summon officials from the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau in charge of wiretapping work for interviews, he added.
Vice Minister of Justice Tsai Pi-yu (蔡碧玉), who was named the convener of the task force assembled the previous day, said she and the 10 other members — four justice officials and prosecutors and six legal experts — will discuss how the investigation should be conducted.
Tsai said that the investigation is administrative, rather than criminal, and will look into possible improper conduct by prosecutors.
Asked whether the task force would interview President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Lo said: “We might like to interview President Ma if it is really necessary, but because it is an administrative investigation, not a criminal one, we do not know whether Ma is willing to receive an interview.”
Concerns about the wiretapping conducted by the SID were raised after it was revealed on Sept. 28 that the legislature’s switchboard was monitored earlier this year.
The SID reported a case against former justice minister Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) and High Prosecutors’ Office head prosecutor Chen Shou-huang (陳守煌) to the Control Yuan and a Ministry of Justice review board for prosecutors respectively on Sept. 6 for allegedly issuing an instruction not to appeal a court case against Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘).
Tseng and Chen allegedly acted after receiving calls from Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), the SID said, citing evidence including telephone records and recordings gathered from eavesdropping on Ker’s telephone conversations.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
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