The Control Yuan has voted to impeach 601st Air Cavalry Brigade Lieutenant Colonel Lao Nai-cheng (勞乃成) and two other officers over security breaches and rule violations in what came to be known as the “Apache helicopter scandal” earlier this year.
A nine-member Control Yuan committee yesterday said that it had voted unanimously to impeach Lao, a pilot-instructor for the US-made AH-64E Apache attack helicopter.
Brigade commander Major General Chien Tsung-yuan (簡聰淵) was impeached after a unanimous vote, while brigade personnel section head Lieutenant Colonel Tao Kuo-chen (陶國禎) was impeached after an 8-1 vote.
Lao took a group of 26 relatives and friends, including a Japanese man and five domestic caregivers who were foreign nationals, on a private tour of a restricted-access base which houses Apache helicopters and other advanced aircraft.
That visit on March 29 led to a firestorm after one visitor, TV personality Janet Lee (李蒨蓉), posted photographs on Facebook that drew widespread public criticism.
The Control Yuan report accused Lao of “wasting” the NT$40 million (US$1.28 million) the government spent to send him to the US for flight training.
“Lao took the nation’s assets as his own private property. He used the Apache helicopter as a social networking tool and took the helicopter helmet as a prop for a private party. During the investigation, Lao continued to lie about his actions and tried to cover them up. He has brought dishonor to the military,” the report said.
Chien was was the first person to breach base security with a tour for his relatives and friends on Feb. 20 this year, the report said, adding that Lao followed Chien’s example.
The investigation said that Tao was in charge of security and access to the base on March 29, but violated registration requirements and other regulations in permitting Lao’s group to bypass security checks.
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires