Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁) was sentenced by the Taiwan High Court yesterday to four years in jail and a fine of NT$20 million (US$600,000) for illegal trading activities.
The presiding judge said Fu invested in the Taiwan stock exchange from 1997 to 1998 and set up a trading office on Renai Road (仁愛路) in Taipei, borrowing more than NT$3 billion for the purpose of manipulating stock prices.
The court said that Fu caused major disruptions to the stock market by manipulating the prices of several companies and showed no remorse for his crimes.
The ruling may be appealed.
Fu was indicted on Feb. 2, 2000, for illegally speculating in the Taiwan Pineapple Group’s stocks in 1998.
In 2003, Taipei District Court sentenced Fu to six years in jail, fined him NT$150 million and deprived him of his civil rights for four years for the stock speculation. Fu filed an appeal to the Taiwan High Court.
In August 2005 Fu and TV host Chang Shih-chieh (張世傑) were indicted for violating the Securities Transaction Law (證券交易法) and breach of trust for their involvement in illegal trading of several companies’ shares, including Hold-Key Wire & Cable Cooperation.
Fu allegedly ordered Chang —host of a stock market investment program on Taiwan TV — to present false information about Hold-Key shares to the public.
In 2005, the Taiwan High Court sentenced Fu to four years in jail and a fine of NT$60 million. However, that ruling was overturned because Fu had later been cleared of money laundering charges.
Fu said yesterday he had been wronged and would “file as many appeals as it takes” to be served justice.
“Fu Kun-chi is the first one [in Taiwan] who was sentenced to four years in prison even though I lost NT$4 billion in investments and had not been involved in any insider trading or investment disputes,” he told a press conference.
Fu, who is planning to enter the KMT’s primary for Hualien County commissioner, said he would respect the decision of Hualien residents when asked whether he would still run in the primary.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY FLORA WANG
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS