The Taiwan High Court has turned down applications by two former aides to former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to have their bans on traveling outside the country lifted.
The high court rejected applications by former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Ma Yung-cheng (馬永成) and former Presidential Office director Lin Teh-hsun (林德訓) to lift the travel bans.
The high court on Aug. 26 found former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) not guilty of corruption in a retrial of their state affairs fund case. Ma and Lin were also found not guilty of corruption in the same ruling. Ma was sentenced to eight months in prison for forgery and granted three years probation, while Lin was sentenced to six months in prison without probation.
The pair’s lawyer, Richard Lee (李勝琛), said yesterday that Ma and Lin were banned from leaving the country in 2008 when they were charged with corruption, but the ban should be lifted now that they have been found innocent of corruption. In the past five years, Lee said, the pair have not been absent from any of their hearings, so he considered it unnecessary to continue banning them from leaving the country.
Lee said that because Lin was now Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) campaign office director, it was sometimes necessary for him to accompany Tsai abroad. His travel restrictions were a big inconvenience, Lee said.
Lee said the pair never dropped their claims of innocence and it would be improbable that they would flee the country.
The high court ruled that although Lin and Ma were found innocent of corruption, they were guilty of forgery. The court added that prosecutors have appealed the ruling with the Supreme Court.
The Taiwan High Court said that to ensure that the legal process proceeds smoothly, it was necessary to continue to prohibit them from leaving the country.
In the first trial, Ma and Lin were found guilty by the Taipei District Court of helping the former first couple embezzle money from public funds and were sentenced to 20 years and 16 years in prison respectively, and stripped of their civil rights for 10 years and eight years.
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