Former Taipei Deputy Mayor Pong Cheng-sheng (彭振聲) asserted his innocence in the Core Pacific City corruption case yesterday, hours after the death of his wife in Kaohsiung, despite having confessed to his involvement during an interrogation last year.
Upon hearing the news of his wife’s passing while waiting for a court session at the Taipei District Court, Pong broke down in tears, asserted his innocence to prosecutors, and revealed he had considered taking his own life while detained to prove his innocence.
Overcome with emotion, Pong cried out, “Why was I born in this country?” The court initially proposed sending him to a hospital for treatment, but ultimately decided to let him return home under the care of his younger brother.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The Kaohsiung City Fire Bureau reported receiving a call at 9:01am about a person falling from a building. Firefighters found a 72-year-old woman, surnamed Hsieh, deceased with multiple fractures. She was later identified as Pong’s wife.
The Taipei District Court had been scheduled to review Pong’s interrogation recording that morning, but canceled the session due to the sudden news of his wife’s death.
In response to the news of Pong’s wife’s passing, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), of which Pong is a member, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus and ruling Democratic Progressive Party caucus chief executive Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) all expressed their condolences.
Pong was indicted in December last year, along with former Taipei mayor and former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and Core Pacific Group chairman Sheen Ching-jing (沈慶京), in connection with a corruption case.
Prosecutors said the officials accepted bribes from the company to illegally increase the permissible floor area ratio of a redevelopment project, thereby inflating the property’s value by allowing more space to be built and sold.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS