A diplomatic official who was questioned for allegedly demanding bribes for visas when he was posted in Vietnam was released on bail of NT$500,000 early yesterday morning.
Prosecutors have banned Hsiao Yu-wen (蕭裕文) from leaving the country.
He was flanked by television cameras as he arrived at the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning on Thursday at midnight, and did not respond to questions about whether he had taken bribes.
Hsiao was reportedly accused of working in collusion with a broker agency in Vietnam headed by Taiwanese national Tsao Pao-lin (曹保麟) to approve Republic of China visas in exchange for US$3,000, of which US$1,000 went to Hsiao.
When the allegations first emerged earlier last year, Hsiao was transferred back to the ministry and given two major demerits by the ministry’s Evaluation Committee.
Tsao was arrested on Monday by Vietnamese police as he crossed the border from Laos to Vietnam because his passport was found to have expired in November last year. He was brought back to Taiwan on Wednesday.
Prosecutors on Thursday raided the residences of Hsiao and Tsao and subpoenaed both on suspicion of violating the Anti-Corruption Act (貪汙治罪條例).
Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin (林永樂) yesterday dismissed a report in the Apple Daily saying that the ministry has tried to cover up Hsiao’s alleged irregularities.
The ministry last year sent an ethics team to Vietnam to look into the case in April, but found no evidence of wrongdoing.
However, in May, the ministry decided to submit the case to Agency Against Corruption for investigation, he said.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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