Former presidential office adviser Wu Li-pei (吳澧培), political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) and several National Taiwan University (NTU) academics and alumni have filed a complaint with the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office against NTU president-elect Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) over allegations of forgery and other charges.
The complaint was filed by Wu and Peng’s lawyers — Chan Chin-chien (詹晉鑒) and Chiu Yi-feng (邱一峰) — accompanied by Taiwan Solidarity Union member Hsiao Ya-tan (蕭亞譚) and other university alumni.
Despite being embroiled in controversy over plagiarism, Kuan was chosen by the NTU election committee in January to succeed Yang Pan-chyr (楊泮池) as university president.
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
However, during the selection process, Kuan did not disclose that he was an independent director at Taiwan Mobile Co.
Local media recently reported that Kuan had held lecturer and adjunct professor jobs at several universities in China, while serving as a minister in Taiwan.
The lawyers urged prosecutors to investigate the forgery and other charges, saying Kuan should have been disqualified from the university’s election process as he did not disclose his role at Taiwan Mobile.
The group also asked prosecutors to investigate key members of the NTU election committee, including Kuo Tei-wei (郭大維), Huang Yun-ju (黃韻如) and Chen Wei-cho (陳維昭), accusing them of gaining undue benefit by electing Kuan to the position and deliberately overlooking his legal violations.
“We urge the NTU not to use ‘university autonomy’ to shield their real purpose of colluding to protect Kuan and seize the president’s office. We ask the NTU to address these transgressions and punish those who engaged in fraud during the election process, and to investigate violations of the law by Kuan,” Chan said.
Kuan was responsible for the NTU’s involvement in these controversies, Hsiao said, adding that Kuan was holding the university hostage.
A number of NTU academics have also called to disqualify Kuan from being able to assume office, saying that since 2014 he has been listed as an adjunct professor at Xiamen University in China’s Fujian Province, while serving as a minister from 2013 to 2015 under the KMT administration.
They said that Kuan was also a lecturer at three Chinese universities from 2005 to 2007, while he was a director at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Economics from 2001 to 2007.
They accused Kuan of breaching provisions under the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), the Civil Servant Work Act (公務員服務法) and the Act Governing the Relations Between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例).
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying