The Taiwan High Court yesterday commuted from 12 years to 10 years the jail sentence of Hsiao Yu-wen (蕭裕文), a former secretary at the nation’s representative office in Vietnam, for corruption in a student visa bribery scandal.
According to the court ruling, Hsiao was found guilty on 27 counts of profiteering and of having property he could not account for.
His assets acquired via illegal means, including 83 Louis Vuitton bags and accessories, as well as more than US$97,000 in cash, were confiscated.
Hsiao’s accomplice, Tsao Pao-lin (曹保麟), a Taiwanese visa broker operating in Vietnam, was sentenced to 18 months for document forgery, commuted from the original penalty of two years in prison handed down in the first trial by the Taipei District Court.
The rulings can be appealed.
The commutations were made based on evidence that Hsiao was innocent of a forgery charge and that most of Tsao’s offenses occurred in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, which is outside Taiwan’s jurisdiction, the ruling said.
The prosecution said Hsiao was found to be colluding with Tsao to approve student visas for unqualified Vietnamese applicants seeking to study in Taiwan in exchange for cash.
Tsao was found to have counterfeited financial and Mandarin proficiency certificates for visa applicants.
During the investigation, prosecutors found that Hsiao had handled 27 student visa cases, in each case charging the schools a 10 percent fee — between NT$2,000 and NT$3,000 — as a brokerage fee.
Hsiao was also found to have used to cash to pay US$75,585 in rent in Vietnam from May 2010 to January 2013. He also purchased 83 Louis Vuitton luxury products at a total cost of 1.2 billion dong (US$52,800).
The prosecution said Hsiao failed to detail the sources of his finances, while his salary was his only verifiable source of income.
The scandal first came to light in 2014 and on Dec. 28 last year the Taipei District Court sentenced Hsiao to 12 years in prison on charges of profiteering and owning property of unknown origin — both violations of the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) — while sentencing Tsao to two years in jail for forgery.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Eleanor Wang (王珮玲) declined to comment on the case.
Hsiao, who was transferred back to Taipei after the ministry discovered abnormalities in the issuance of visas he processed in early 2013, remains a ministry employee, Wang said, adding that the ministry would not address the issue until the final ruling in the case.
Taiwan would welcome the return of Honduras as a diplomatic ally if its next president decides to make such a move, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. “Of course, we would welcome Honduras if they want to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan after their elections,” Lin said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, when asked to comment on statements made by two of the three Honduran presidential candidates during the presidential campaign in the Central American country. Taiwan is paying close attention to the region as a whole in the wake of a
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), spokeswoman Yang Chih-yu (楊智伃) and Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) would be summoned by police for questioning for leading an illegal assembly on Thursday evening last week, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said today. The three KMT officials led an assembly outside the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office, a restricted area where public assembly is not allowed, protesting the questioning of several KMT staff and searches of KMT headquarters and offices in a recall petition forgery case. Chu, Yang and Hsieh are all suspected of contravening the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) by holding
PRAISE: Japanese visitor Takashi Kubota said the Taiwanese temple architecture images showcased in the AI Art Gallery were the most impressive displays he saw Taiwan does not have an official pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, because of its diplomatic predicament, but the government-backed Tech World pavilion is drawing interest with its unique recreations of works by Taiwanese artists. The pavilion features an artificial intelligence (AI)-based art gallery showcasing works of famous Taiwanese artists from the Japanese colonial period using innovative technologies. Among its main simulated displays are Eastern gouache paintings by Chen Chin (陳進), Lin Yu-shan (林玉山) and Kuo Hsueh-hu (郭雪湖), who were the three young Taiwanese painters selected for the East Asian Painting exhibition in 1927. Gouache is a water-based
President William Lai (賴清德) has appointed former vice president Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) to attend the late Pope Francis’ funeral at the Vatican City on Saturday on his behalf, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said today. The Holy See announced Francis’ funeral would take place on Saturday at 10am in St Peter’s Square. The ministry expressed condolences over Francis’ passing and said that Chen would represent Taiwan at the funeral and offer condolences in person. Taiwan and the Vatican have a long-standing and close diplomatic relationship, the ministry said. Both sides agreed to have Chen represent Taiwan at the funeral, given his Catholic identity and
RSS