All members of the Taipei Dome review committee have been listed by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office as defendants, as prosecutors investigate allegations involving the Dome’s safety reviews.
Many of the committee members, all of whom are experts from non-governmental agencies, were summoned for questioning yesterday.
Farglory Group (遠雄集團) won the Dome’s tender in 2003 and began negotiations with the Taipei City Government about the build-operate-transfer contract. It was eventually allowed to construct the Dome without having to pay any royalties to the city government.
Many civil groups said that the safety reviews were problematic and accused some of the reviewers of working in Farglory’s favor.
The summoned reviewers all rejected allegations that they had worked to benefit Farglory.
Some of the reviewers’ families said that they only received meager allowances for the job, but were implicated in the scandal for no reason, affecting their positions at universities.
The families said that former Taiwan Architecture and Building Center chief executive officer Hsu Ming-wen (許銘文) was the one covering for the company.
Hsu was summoned for questioning in June about allegations of profiteering, and was released on NT$500,000 bail.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was summoned on Wednesday as a defendant over accusations that he benefited Farglory during his tenure as Taipei mayor when the city government started negotiating the contract with the company in 2004.
Ma was allowed to leave after being questioned for more than eight hours, while former Taipei Department of Finance commissioner Lee Sush-der (李述德), who was also summoned for questioning on Wednesday, was banned from leaving the country after a questioning session of about 14 hours.
During the questioning, prosecutors had to present many pieces of evidence to help Lee recall the circumstances, as he said he could not remember details of the negotiation.
The prosecutors’ office yesterday said they were comparing the defendants’ accounts with that of former Farglory Group vice president Tsai Chung-i (蔡宗易), the Dome’s original designer Liu Pei-sen (劉培森) and the group’s chairman Chao Teng-hsiung (趙藤雄), and would not rule out summoning Ma again for questioning.
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
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
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