An official at the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Taipei chapter on Friday said he would resign over allegations that his son had been implicated in a narcotics and fraud investigation.
Chao Ying-kuang’s (趙映光) son, Chao Chieh-yu (趙介佑), faces accusations of having been involved in racketeering, assault and kidnapping related to organized crime.
Chao Ying-kuang resigned as convener of the Taipei chapter’s review committee after earlier saying that his son should be expelled from the party.
Photo: Yang Hsin-hui, Taipei Times
Taipei chapter head Enoch Wu (吳怡農) said he had no prior knowledge of the accusations against Chao Chieh-yu.
Two days after hearing about the allegations, Wu initiated the expulsion of Chao Chieh-yu from the party through the chapter’s disciplinary committee, he said.
Chao Chieh-yu’s party membership would likely be revoked tomorrow as party bylaws require providing three days of advance notice before expelling a member, he added.
“We have zero tolerance for gangs. No one will be protected after breaking the law or contravening party discipline,” Wu said.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday said that “no one will be allowed to jeopardize the government’s integrity.”
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who is also DPP chairperson, said in her first speech to the party following her re-election last year that integrity is a founding value of the DPP, Su added.
“Government integrity is a lifelong, personal tenet of mine, as a founding member of the DPP,” he said. “Anyone who contravenes this value should be held accountable through party discipline, and applicable laws should be enforced to the fullest.”
In a Facebook post yesterday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Cheng Cheng-chien (鄭正鈐) said that Tsai, as DPP chairperson, should “apologize and explain” the scandal surrounding the DPP’s Taipei chapter.
Chao Chieh-yu in 2016 was an adviser to Tsai’s presidential campaign office in Taipei, he said.
Tsai has told the National Police Agency that it must quash drugs, gangs and fraud, Cheng said.
“Would [Tsai] please start with the gangs and drugs in the DPP?” he added.
Additional reporting by Yang Kuo-wen and Lin Hui-chin
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