The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday issued a wanted bulletin for the arrest of investment company head Chung Wen-chih (鍾文智), who was convicted on fraud charges, after he jumped bail. Chung was president of Mo Tan Li International Investment Co, and owned a seafood business.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday handed him a 30-years-and-six-months prison term for profiting NT$470 million (US$14.26 million) from fraud in stock trading and the manipulation of Taiwan depositary receipts (TDRs) of five companies.
Chung was convicted on five counts of manipulating stock prices, contravening the Securities and Exchange Act (證券交易法), and two counts of money laundering.
Photo: Taipei Times
He previously appealed the first ruling in 2021, during which he was given an 18-year sentence, and the second ruling in 2022, when he was handed a slightly shorter prison term of 17 years and six months.
The court filing showed that the Taipei District Court did not put him in pretrial detention and released him on bail of NT$50 million in 2018. He was required to stay at home, could not go abroad and needed to report to the local police station every day.
After the first appeal, the court ordered Chung to pay an additional NT$30 million bail, with the same restrictions. He also only had to report to the police three times per week: Monday, Thursday and Saturday.
During his appeal to the High Court, Chung requested that the restriction on his movement be lifted and that he be allowed to travel abroad. He also filed an injunction to stop the weekly reporting to police.
The High Court denied his request and injunction, and imposed restrictions on movement and travel until the second ruling.
In October 2023, after a prominent figure in another financial crime case fled abroad, Chung was required to wear an ankle monitor so his daily movement could be tracked. He was later allowed to wear a lighter monitor on his wrist until his bail period ended in October last year.
He was ordered to pay an additional NT$20 million bail bond, but was not required to put on an electronic monitor.
Legal practitioners and experts said the High Court was negligent and had failed to handle the case properly.
As Chung was not required to wear a monitor, police could not track his movements and he was able to flee, they said.
The High Court in a statement on Friday said that Chung had met previous bail conditions, was still required to report to the local police and restricted from traveling abroad, and had been ordered to pay an accumulated bond amounting to NT$100 million — which they believed was enough to deter Chung from jumping bail — so they did not require Chung to wear an electronic monitor.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS