A former judge and his son are suspected of shipping coal from North Korea to sell in Vietnam in contravention of UN sanctions on Pyongyang, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said on Monday.
The office said in a statement that Chiang Kuo-hua (江國華), a former Taiwan High Court judge, and his son, Chiang Heng (江衡), chartered a cargo ship via a Chinese intermediary to transport 4 tonnes of anthracite coal from a port in North Korea to Vietnam some time between August and September last year.
In addition to the Chiangs, two other men are also implicated in the case, the office said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The four have been named as defendants and were accused of assisting terrorists and forging documents.
More than 70 prosecutors and police officers on Sunday raided the headquarters of a company founded by the Chiangs and the residences of the four defendants.
Three of the defendants and four witnesses were questioned.
Prosecutors claim that the Chiangs and the two others fabricated the origin of the coal they transported.
During the journey, the Global Positioning System on the cargo ship was turned off to prevent it from being tracked, prosecutors said, adding that the former judge was hospitalized after claiming to be ill and failed to visit the office for questioning.
The office has issued an arrest warrant for him.
After questioning Chiang Heng, prosecutors believe that he was involved in the case and have applied to a court to detain him to prevent him destroying evidence or colluding with the other defendants.
The two other defendants have been released on bail of NT$100,000 each, they said.
Earlier this month, a Taiwanese was accused of involvement in a separate case in which he allegedly chartered a Hong Kong-registered vessel to secretly sell oil to North Korea.
The man denies the accusations.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS