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.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS