The High Court on Thursday upheld a guilty verdict against former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Miaoli County commissioner and legislator Ho Chi-hui (何智輝) on corruption charges and handed Ho a 13-year prison term, while ordering him to pay back NT$52 million (US$1.57 million) in illegally gained profits.
Legal experts and critics said the litigation had dragged on for too long, and that the decision came too late, because Ho and his wife, Wang Su-yun (王素筠), who is also a former KMT legislator facing corruption charges, had already fled to China in 2010.
Ho was found guilty of receiving kickbacks on an industrial park development project in Tongluo Township (銅鑼) of Miaoli County, during his tenure as the county commissioner from 1993 to 1997.
Thursday’s decision came at the end of a third retrial at the High Court and the ruling can be appealed.
In the first ruling in 2006, Ho was sentenced to a 19-year prison term, which was reduced to a 14-year term in the 2011 retrial, where he was ordered to return NT$223.5 million in illegal gains.
Ho was first elected to a legislative seat in Miaoli County in 1990, which position he served until 1993. He was elected county commissioner and was in office from 1993 to 1997. Afterwards, Ho was elected as a KMT legislator for three terms, from 1999 to 2008.
Investigation revealed that Ho abused his authority as county commissioner and used his political influence as a KMT legislator in the 1990s to receive bribes and kickbacks in expropriating land plots for the Tongluo Township expansion case.
It was found out that Ho had pressured management officials at the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park (新竹科學園區) to transfer kickbacks of NT$220 million to a company controlled by Ho’s wife, while he and Hsiung Ming-wu (熊名武), a co-defendant in the case, split their share on another illegal kickback of NT$130 million.
Ho’s case led to a scandal in the justice system, when it was found out that he had paid more than NT$10 million in bribes to four judges and a prosecutor, to ensure a “not guilty” verdict in the High Court retrial in May 2010.
After coming under investigation, the four High Court judges — Chen Jung-ho (陳榮和), Lee Chun-ti (李春地), Tsai Kuang-chih (蔡光治) and Lin Ming-chun (林明俊) — along with prosecutor Chiu Mao-jung (邱茂榮) were arrested and detained for questioning in July 2010.
They were charged under the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例), in a probe at the time said to be the largest investigation into judicial corruption ever conducted by the Special Investigation Panel of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office.
Afterwards, Ho and his wife evaded monitoring by judicial agents and fled to China in July 2010 to avoid conviction and they remain fugitives to this day.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS