The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office is hoping for help from Australia as it investigates the allegations of self-confessed Chinese spy William Wang Liqiang (王立強), a Ministry of Justice official said yesterday.
The ministry official, who asked not to be named, said the office wrote a letter requesting that Australia provide it with a transcript of Wang’s comments given to Australian authorities on his role in reportedly attempting to influence Taiwan’s elections.
The letter also asked for information pertaining to China Innovation Investment Ltd (中國創新投資) executive director Xiang Xin (向心) and his wife, acting director Kung Ching (龔青), whom Wang accused of being players in China’s efforts to affect Taiwan’s elections, the official said.
Prosecutors are also hoping that Australia would allow Taiwanese investigators to question Wang through online video conferencing, the official added.
The letter is to be given to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be delivered to relevant agencies in Australia, where Wang is seeking asylum, the official said, adding that as Taiwan and Australia have not signed a mutual legal assistance agreement, the odds that Canberra would meet the requests were not high.
Several questions have also been raised about whether Wang is really a spy, and there has been no independent confirmation of his identity and the veracity of the allegations he has made.
Based on Wang’s public statements, Xiang and Kung were stopped for questioning by Taiwanese authorities as they were preparing to depart for Hong Kong from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Sunday last week.
Both were released after questioning, but prosecutors on Tuesday barred them from leaving the nation pending further investigation.
The Chinese couple have visited Taiwan several times in the past, and own two properties in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義), which they have since leased, Taipei prosecutors said.
Before Wang appeared in public, they were in Taipei looking at a potential investment opportunity related to property in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), prosecutors said.
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,