Prosecutor Chen Cheng-ta (陳正達) yesterday was summoned for questioning by Kaohsiung prosecutors over falsely indicting two men of arms smuggling, after two investigators were detained in the scandal.
At press time, the questioning was still in progress.
"Chen, who indicted the two men for arms smuggling -- both surnamed Shi -- is himself suspected of being involved in the the smuggling of weapons, so prosecutors have summoned him for questioning," Lin Ching-tsung (林慶宗), the spokesman for the Kaohsiung Prosecutors' Office said yesterday.
Chen was transferred from the Kaohsiung Prosecutors' Office to the Miaoli Prosecutors' Office earlier this year after the scandal broke and an investigation was launched.
The Kaohsiung District Court ruled that two agents of the Ministry of Justice's Criminal Investigation Bureau -- Tsai Jui-shi (蔡俊士) and Chao Pei-liang (趙培良) -- are also suspected of falsely accusing the two men of smuggling a large number of guns into Taiwan from the Philippines.
Prosecutors said Tsai and Chao are not only being held on suspicion of falsely charging the two men, but for involvement in smuggling weapons themselves in concert with Kaohsiung gangsters. Authorities speculate that Tsai and Chao wrongly accused the two men of the crime to cover up their own involvement in the case.
Chao Pei-liang's brother, Chao Pei-shen (趙培盛), is a known Kaohsiung-based gangster involved in smuggling rings. He was previously indicted for smuggling arms in to Taiwan but fled the country after getting wind of the indictment, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors said Tsai and Chao's statements implicated Chen in the crime.
Chen has told reporters that he legally indicted the two Shis, and that the scandal was not true.
Chinese-language newspapers have reported that the large number of weapons in Chang Hsi-ming's (張錫銘) possession came from Kaohsiung-based arms-smuggling groups, which had connections to Chen, Tsai, and Chao. But prosecutors said they still do not know whether Chang Hsi-ming's arms were from the smuggling gangsters.
Prosecutors said that in 2003, prosecutor Chen, Chao and Tsai tracked down cargo at Kaohsiung harbor which contained 50 guns and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition, and arrested a man surnamed Shi.
Later that year, the trio "discovered" another 49 guns and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition at a fishing harbor in Kaohsiung, and arrested another man surnamed Shi.
Chen then indicted the two Shis for arms smuggling. Chen and the two agents then applied for a reward offered by the Ministry of Justice for hunting down the large number of arms, but the ministry had not granted them the reward by the time the scandal broke out.
Prosecutors suspect that gangsters might have offered Chen and Tsai guns and ammunition, helping them bolster the bogus charges against the Shis. The also suspect that Chen and Tsai were involved in the crime in order to collect the reward money offered by the government for any information leading to the seizure of illegal weapons.
Both men surnamed Shi then provided evidence to court to show that they were falsely indicted, but their cases are still pending.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS