Former Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) director-general Yeh Sheng-mao (葉盛茂) was sentenced to 16 months in prison by the Taiwan High Court last week for concealing a government file.
A panel of three judges at the court on Thursday ruled that Yeh, while head of the bureau, turned over information on family members of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who had been laundering money overseas, to Chen, which allowed the former first family time to make other arrangements.
Yeh’s diversion of the file seriously undermined the credibility of judicial institutes and the image of the nation, the judges said.
However, considering that Yeh has shown deep remorse for his deeds, the judges said they decided to hand down a jail sentence of only 16 months. The ruling can still be appealed.
At the center of the money laundering case was a report delivered to the MJIB in January 2008 through international anti-money laundering organization the Egmont Group. In the report, the Cayman Islands’ financial intelligence unit raised the suspicion that the former first family was laundering money through an account created under the name of Chen’s daughter-in-law, Huang Jui-ching (黃睿靚), at the Merrill Lynch Bank in Geneva, Switzerland.
Based on the report, the bureau’s Anti-Money Laundering Center on Jan. 29, 2008, compiled a file intended for delivery to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office.
Yeh later requested that the file be handed over to him, saying that he would pass it to then-state public prosecutor-general Chen Tsung-ming (陳聰明) in person.
Yeh instead leaked its contents to Chen Shui-bian during a visit to the former president’s official residence.
Yeh was initially sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Taipei District Court for mishandling money laundering intelligence, in addition to a separate case of alleged influence-peddling. The sentence was reduced to six years by the High Court.
In the latest conviction, the court found Yeh guilty of concealing a government file, for which he was given a prison term of three years and nine months, against which Yeh later appealed.
The conviction for confidential information leakage was final and Yeh was given a two-and-a-half-year prison term. Yeh began to serve his sentence in July last year and was released on Sept. 13 on parole.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS