A lawyer and his girlfriend were taken into custody yesterday as part of a probe into a bribery case that implicates at least one Taiwan High Court judge.
The Taipei District Court agreed to a prosecutorial request to detain Chiu Chuang-shun (邱創舜) and his girlfriend Tuan Mei-yueh (段美月) to facilitate investigations into a bribery case involving Yang Ping-chen (楊炳禎), a Taiwan High Court judge.
Prosecutors applied to detain Chiu and Tuan late on Wednesday after quizzing them about their alleged involvement in the case.
Prosecutors and investigators raided 20 locations in major cities in northern Taiwan on Wednesday in a new drive to root out corruption in the judiciary.
Among the locations searched were the residences of Yang and Chiu, a high court spokesman said.
He said that the high court fully respected the prosecutors’ right to conduct investigations and that the case concerning Yang will be forwarded to the high court’s self-disciplinary panel.
Wednesday’s operations were ordered by State Public Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) who concurrently heads the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Panel (SIP).
Yang is under investigation for allegedly playing a role in an earlier acquittal of former high court judge Chang Ping-lung (張炳龍), who was given a 12 year prison sentence for taking bribes, judicial sources said.
It was the second large-scale probe into suspected corruption in the judiciary in recent weeks and was carried out under an SIP-led judiciary self-correction campaign aimed at ridding the judicial system of graft and ensuring its integrity.
Three high court judges and a prosecutor have been detained since the middle of last month on bribery charges involving former Miaoli County Commissioner Ho Chih-hui (何智輝).
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