Investigators yesterday summoned an actress-turned-prison-counselor for questioning after she alleged that a judge, currently detained on graft charges, had sentenced a man to death following a failed bribe attempt.
Taiwan High Court Judge Chen Jung-ho (陳榮和) on Wednesday last week along with two other judges in a corruption scandal.
Angela Ying (應曉薇) last week alleged that Chen, working through a defense lawyer, had sought to extort NT$3 million (US$100,000) from a defendant in a murder case. However, because the defendant was not able to raise the money, Chen sentenced him to death.
Ying, who has counseled more than 300,000 inmates in groups or individually over 16 years, including dozens of detainees on death row, said the defendant had revealed the information to her in prison.
Ying would not name the defendant publicly, but said she was willing to provide investigators with details of the case in private.
Ying was questioned as a witness yesterday.
Chen and Taiwan High Court judges Lee Chun-ti (李春地) and Tsai Kuang-chih (蔡光治), as well as Banciao prosecutor Chiu Mao-jung (邱茂榮), were detained on suspicion of corruption when handling four charges against former KMT legislator Ho Chih-hui (何智輝), who once served as Miaoli County commissioner.
They are suspected of taking or facilitating bribes offered by Ho in return for overturning a lower court’s guilty verdict in a corruption case stemming from his time as a legislator. Sentenced in 2006 to 19 years in prison for receiving kickbacks during the development phase of the Tongluo expansion of Hsinchu Science Park in Miaoli County, Ho in May saw his sentence overturned by the Taiwan High Court.
Judicial Yuan president Lai In-jaw (賴英照) and Taiwan High Court chief justice Huang Shui-tong (黃水通) resigned on Sunday to take responsibility for the scandal.
In a statement, the Judges Association of the ROC (Taiwan) yesterday called on President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to help the Judicial Yuan enact a judges’ law, which could help weed out unqualified judges.
Meanwhile, investigators are still searching for Ho, who is believed to be in Miaoli County.
Ho fled from his residence in Miaoli County just before investigators reached his house early on Tuesday last week and has not been seen since.
Prosecutors have placed Ho on the wanted list.
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
RSS