Jeffrey Koo Jr (辜仲諒), former vice chairman of Chinatrust Financial Holding Co, has been prohibited from leaving the country, as the presiding judge in a pre-trial court hearing on Wednesday said Koo was a suspect in a serious case and considered a flight risk.
Koo attended the pre-trial hearing at the Taipei District Court to face questioning on charges of violating the Securities Exchange Act (證券交易法) and the Banking Law (銀行法) when he gave the directive for the acquisition of Mega Financial Holding Co through a Hong Kong branch of Chinatrust in 2004.
The Taipei District Court prosecutors’ office in 2006 twice summoned Koo regarding suspected irregularities in the deal, but the banker failed to show up in court and left Taiwan in September 2006.
Koo stayed abroad for almost two years after the court put him on a wanted list in December 2006.
He returned to Taipei in November 2008 when prosecutors were investigating alleged corruption and bribery involving former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and several bankers.
At the pre-trial hearing on Wednesday, Koo denied all the allegations, insisting that the purchase of Mega Financial shares was purely an investment matter.
When the judge issued the travel ban, Koo pleaded for leniency, saying that he has a sick wife in the US and one of his two children in Japan is autistic.
However, the presiding judge said that financial crimes are considered severe offenses and the penalty could be a jail term of no less than five years.
Koo, with his previous record of dodging a court order, might attempt to run again and should be restricted from leaving country, the judge said.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
RSS