The Constitutional Court yesterday ruled that the government may seize US$480 million from accounts belonging to the estate of late arms dealer Andrew Wang (汪傳浦) by retroactively applying property seizure rules that were amended in the Criminal Code in 2016.
The decision threw out a constitutional challenge by Wang’s wife, Yeh Hsiu-chen (葉秀貞), Wei Chuan Foods Corp and other parties to the legal application and property confiscation rules stipulated by the Criminal Code’s articles 2, 38 and 40.
The verdict of Constitutional Case No. 18, 2022 establishes the principle that confiscating criminal proceeds is a restorative measure that gives assets back to their rightful owners, instead of a punishment for the guilty, Chief Justice Hsu Tzong-li (許宗力) said.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
This means the government did not breach the Constitution’s protections against ex post facto laws, which prohibit the retroactive application of punitive measures, but do not prevent the implementation of restorative measures, Hsu said.
The plaintiffs cannot lay claim to the breach of their legitimate expectations as a third party because they had accepted criminal proceeds in bad faith, he said.
The amendments to property confiscation rules stipulate that illicit gains should be confiscated according to the law at the time of judgement, not the crime’s commission, and that the property of a third party could be seized if they had acted in bad faith.
Wang was a central figure in the Lafayette frigate procurement scandal.
He fled Taiwan on Dec. 20, 1993, days after the body of navy captain Yin Ching-feng (尹清楓) was found in waters off the east coast.
Yin was reportedly a whistle-blower who had planned to report graft and siphoning of funds by people involved in the deal.
Prosecutors in 2006 indicted Wang on charges of bribery, money laundering and other crimes.
He reportedly died in the UK in 2015, leaving a sizeable inheritance to his family in accounts held mainly in Swiss banks.
Yeh, who was also indicted in connection to the scandal, is living abroad as a fugitive and filed the case by proxy.
Wei Chuan Foods joined the lawsuit to avoid the seizure of NT$32.9 million (US$1.07 million) in assets after company chairman Wei Ying-chung (魏應充) was found guilty of selling tainted food oils.
A court found the company liable for the scheme a few months before the amendments passed in 2016.
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