Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office officials on Wednesday permitted former Taipei Department of Finance commissioner Lee Sush-der (李述德) to return home, but placed him under house arrest and banned him from leaving the country.
They also said they would not rule out summoning former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for further questioning in connection with the Taipei Dome corruption case.
Prosecutors on Wednesday questioned Ma for more than nine hours, as he had been listed as a defendant along with Lee, Farglory Group (遠雄集團) founder Chao Teng-hsiung (趙藤雄), former Farglory vice president Tsai Chung-i (蔡宗易) and architect Liu Pei-sen (劉培森), the original designer of the project.
Photo: Chien Li-chung, Taipei Times
After 14 hours of questioning, Lee at about 11pm was the last person among the five to leave the prosecutors’ office.
It was reported that prosecutors have gathered evidence indicating that then-Taipei mayor Ma in 2004 might have colluded with Chao to improperly favor Farglory to win the Taipei Dome contract, the terms of which would allow the firm to reap considerable financial benefits.
Prosecutors said that after cross-checking the statements given by Ma and the other four principal figures, Ma is likely to be summoned for further questioning.
During the contract negotiation process for the Taipei Dome build-operate-transfer project in September 2004, there were reportedly several crucial meetings between the Taipei City Government and Farglory executives.
Lee reportedly told prosecutors that Ma met with Chao in September 2004, when Ma allegedly agreed to grant a waiver from paying royalties on the complex.
The investigation is to focus on the details of what transpired in the meetings between them.
Prosecutors said that the royalty waiver would have cost the city about NT$400 million (US$13.2 million) per year for the duration of the 50-year contract for the dome complex, which was to include a baseball stadium, movie theaters, department store, hotel and office buildings.
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
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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