The Supreme Court handed out a jail term of 22 years and 10 month to socialite Justin Lee (李宗瑞), who was convicted of sexual assault and related offenses against five female victims.
Yesterday’s ruling was final and cannot be appealed. Some legal experts said it is one of the heaviest sentences for sexual assault and related offenses in recent years.
Lee reportedly used his wealthy family background to live like a playboy, frequenting Taipei nightclubs beginning in 2009. He was accused of taking young women home, where he drugged and sexually assaulted them. He was also accused of filming the incidents without the knowledge of his female partners.
Prosecutors gathered evidence and testimonies that indicated Lee sexually assaulted 34 women and filmed 20 of the victims.
Lee’s case became the focus of public attention in 2012, as photographs and videos taken by Lee of the victims were circulated on the Internet.
Thirty-year-old Lee comes from a wealthy family. His father, Lee Yueh-tsang (李岳蒼), was a board member of Yuanta Financial Holding Co and a director at Yuanta Securities Co, but resigned after his son’s offenses were made public.
In September last year, the High Court sentenced Lee to 30 years in prison and ordered him to pay compensation to the victims amounting to NT$27.75 million (US$853,504).
During investigations police found many pictures and explicit videos — some with Lee engaging in sexual acts with the victims — on a computer seized at Lee’s Taipei residence.
Lee was accused of drugging the women he brought home, then secretly filming them in sexual acts. Lee maintained that all acts were consensual.
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