Prosecutors have decided not to appeal last week’s Taiwan High Court verdict that former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) was not guilty of corruption and money laundering between 1998 and 2000 when he was in office.
The Special Investigation Division of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office yesterday said that it will not file an appeal because the case now hinges on the Fair and Speedy Criminal Trials Act (刑事妥速審判法).
The law stipulates that any not-guilty verdict at both the district court and High Court levels can only be appealed by prosecutors if the law or order applied in the judgement is unconstitutional; the judgement violates an interpretation by the Judicial Yuan; or the judgement contradicts precedent.
Lee, 91, and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) treasurer Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英), a long-time Lee confidant, were indicted in June 2011 on charges of corruption, embezzlement and money laundering in connection with a secret National Security Bureau fund.
The prosecutors alleged that US$7.79 million was diverted from the fund in the late 1990s to finance the Taiwan Research Institute, a research organization established by Liu in 1994.
The High Court’s ruling on Wednesday last week upheld Liu’s guilty verdict for embezzling public funds and extended his prison sentence from two years and eight months to three years. It also ordered him to return US$150,000.
Liu’s case can be appealed.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
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