Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Lo Fu-chu (羅福助) was placed on the most wanted list yesterday after failing to report to prosecutors on Tuesday to begin serving a four-year prison term.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office made the announcement in the afternoon, adding that Lo would remain on the wanted list until December 2030 — when the statute of limitations of his case run out — or until he is caught.
The office also confiscated his NT$10 million (US$339,000) bond.
In response to criticism that the authorities again failed to prevent a major convict from absconding, the Ministry of Justice blamed gaps in the law when it comes to monitoring convicted criminals such as Lo.
The Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) does not allow law enforcement officials to monitor convicts’ communication lines in the days before they are expected to report to prosecutors to start their prison terms, the ministry said in a press statement.
Prosecutors can only issue warrants for convicted criminals when they fail to report for prison, it said.
The ministry said it plans to amend the law to allow prosecutors to issue warrants for major criminals as soon as the courts hand down final verdicts in their cases. It also wants prosecutors to be able to monitor convicts through electronic tags and other means as they await their final verdict.
On March 28, the Supreme Court sentenced Lo to four years in prison and fined him NT$6 million for stock manipulation, forgery and money laundering under the Securities and Exchange Act (證券交易法) and the Business Accounting Act (商業會計法).
Lo has not been seen in public for nearly a month and reports said he may have fled the country after Tomb Sweeping Day on April 4 and could be in China, Australia or the US. He is believed to have invested in a hotel in Shanghai.
Meanwhile, Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) said the period between when a final sentence in a case is handed down and the time when a convicted criminal must report to start their sentence was too long, but there is not much authorities can do unless the law is revised.
“There’s certainly a gray area in the law that can be taken advantage of and there’s always room for evaluation on whether change is needed,” he said. “There is also the practical difficulty of trying to keep track of every convict [awaiting a final verdict] 24 hours a day. We’ll discuss this with the Ministry of Justice and see what we can do.”
“We also need to respect the basic human rights of an inmate-to-be,” he added.
Additional reporting by Loa Iok-sin
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
RSS