The Control Yuan has reprimanded the Ministry of Justice for allowing two Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) politicians to escape punishment after they were found guilty by the courts.
After convening on Wednesday, Control Yuan committee members agreed to serve a “corrective measure” to the ministry for negligence in its handling of cases involving former Tainan County council speaker Wu Chien-pao (吳健保) and former Ruifang (瑞芳) township mayor Liao Hsiu-hsiung (廖秀雄).
The Control Yuan statement said that during the court proceedings, prosecutors should have requested the prosecutor-general to establish personal files and monitoring mechanisms on the two men, since both were under criminal investigation and could have been a flight risk.
As the prosecutors were negligent in their duties, and the ministry was clearly at fault for failing to oversee the prosecutorial agencies, a “corrective measure” has been issued to the ministry, the statement said.
Wu was found guilty for his involvement as a financial backer of a major underground gambling syndicate in southern Taiwan, which specialized in taking bets and rigging the outcome of the nation’s professional baseball league.
Wu was convicted and given a 38-month prison sentence, but used his council speaker position to evade punishment.
In 2011, Wu was found guilty of fraud and bid rigging in a case dating from 2006 where he colluded with business associates to run an illegal sand-and-gravel excavation operation for profits estimated at about NT$100 million (US$3.08 million at current exchange rates).
Wu fled from his residence to avoid arrest and jail time, and his whereabouts remain unknown.
Liao was sentenced to 34 months in prison in January after being convicted of embezzling petroleum firm subsidies, and in March was given a nine-year term for receiving kickbacks from a public utility project by Taiwan Power Co.
However, Liao also fled and reportedly escaped to China.
The ministry issued a statement saying that Wu was convicted on fraud and other charges that were not of a serious nature, and the prosecutor in charge at the time had deemed Wu was not a flight risk, as his son was running as a candidate in the local councilor election.
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