New Power Party (NPP) Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) yesterday said that he would visit the Control Yuan today to call for the impeachment of former minister of justice Chiu Tai-san (邱太三), as the Presidential Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Control Yuan appear to have taken no action regarding Chiu’s alleged influence peddling.
Former Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office chief prosecutor Peng Kun-yeh (彭坤業) has denied being in communication with Chiu on any chat app or having received any documents from him related to the alleged influence peddling, Huang said, citing a report the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office sent to him on Wednesday.
This contradicted Chiu’s statement on Tuesday last week following reports that he allegedly interfered with the prosecution of a tax evasion case involving Taoyuan’s Landseed International Hospital.
In the statement, Chiu denied instructing Peng to ensure that a defendant in the case reach a plea deal with the prosecutor in charge, explaining that he merely passed on a complaint from the defendant that the prosecutor had gone back on his word about reaching a plea deal.
Chiu said that he had sent a letter of complaint from the defendant to Peng over a messaging app.
“If he has sent the letter to Peng, it should be easy for him to prove it by showing the correspondence record and the letter,” Huang said, urging Chiu to talk to Peng about the matter.
The Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office’s report said Peng admitted that “as far as he could remember,” the tax evasion case was the only time that an additional prosecutor had been assigned to a case to assist with a plea agreement, Huang said.
Despite the extent to which the scandal has undermined the image of the justice system, no action has been taken by the ministry, the Presidential Office or the Control Yuan, as Chiu had already stepped down as minister when the scandal surfaced last week, he said.
Meanwhile, the National Security Council refused to confirm whether Chiu had formally stepped down as an adviser after tendering his resignation on Tuesday last week, Huang said, adding that Chiu is still listed as an adviser on the council’s Web site.
His repeated requests that the council clarify the date on which Chiu stepped down and whether it has regulations regarding officials delivering complaints to the prosecutors’ office were all ignored, he said.
“Officials have not responded to my formal request for the information and refused to visit my office to explain in person,” Huang said.
“Since when has the National Security Council been above the law and not required to answer to the Legislative Yuan and the public?” he asked.
Huang said the party plans to visit the Control Yuan at 9am today to call for Chiu’s impeachment.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,