Taiwan's ex-president Chen gets life
By Asia Times Online staff
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Former Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian was sentenced to life imprisonment and fined NT$200 million (US$6 million) on corruption charges by a Taipei District Court on Friday, according to Taiwan media reports. Chen has maintained his innocence and called the case "politically motivated".
The charges against Chen included embezzlement, accepting bribes and money laundering during his two terms as Taiwan's leader from 2000 to 2008. Prosecutors claimed in the trial that Chen took nearly US$15 million from state coffers during his presidency and hid the graft with forged documents and secret Swiss bank accounts.
An appeal is automatic, but it will be hard for Chen to overturn the conviction "as he was convicted of many charges and the verdicts
were based on evidence, and not politics," Timothy Wong Ka-ying, associate director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at Chinese University of Hong Kong, told Asia Times Online.
Prosecutors said last year that more than US$30 million of Chen family finances were remitted to accounts in Singapore and the Cayman Islands, then moved to Swiss bank accounts, according to Bloomberg. The former first family agreed to return US$21 million to Taiwan, the report said.
In final statements, the prosecution accused Chen, 58, of having "acted shamefully and with total lack of conscience", according to local media. His wheelchair-bound wife, ** Shu-chen, earlier convicted of perjury, was also given a life sentence on Friday for corruption.
Eyewitnesses said hundreds of Chen's supporters protested outside the central Taipei courtroom with banners reading "Chen's innocent" and "Free him". Still, Chen had not been optimistic about Friday's verdict.
"I will be given the heaviest penalty, life imprisonment, and continue to be held in detention," he told Taiwan's Apple Daily while in detention before the trial. Chen has been detained since December. Chen said Thursday afternoon he would not attend the court to hear the verdict, Taiwan-based United Evening News reported.
Chen's stiff sentence was enhanced by the alleged scope of his abuse of power and for his "uncooperative attitude toward a judicial probe", Hong Kong-based Next Magazine reported, citing legal experts. Others see the event as a benchmark ruling for Taiwan's judiciary.
"Issuing a verdict on Chen is very important to Taiwan because it is the time to see if a corrupt official can be severely punished or [if] Taiwan's judicial system is trustworthy," said Qiu Yi, a Kuomintang lawmaker, to local media.
Earlier this week, Chen's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) pledged to "spare no efforts to support Chen", according to local media. Chen, long a pro-independence advocate for Taiwan, has insisted the charges against him and his family stemmed from Taiwan's current President Ma Ying-jeou, a vocal proponent of improved ties with mainland China.
"Chen's possible conviction will spiritually deal a big blow to Taiwan's pro-independence forces. Chen has always labeled himself as a pro-independence forerunner, and the forerunner will probably spend the rest of his life in prison," Wang Jianmin, of the Institute of Taiwan Studies of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
Rise to the top
Born in 1951 in southern Taiwan to a poor sugarcane factory worker father and an illiterate day laborer mother, Chen excelled academically and graduated in law from the National Taiwan University in 1974.
As a young lawyer, Chen made a name for himself in 1979 with a prominent defense of political dissidents jailed by Taiwan's then martial-law government. This paved his route into the opposition DPP camp. Two years later, he was elected to Taipei City council.
In January 1985, Chen was sentenced to a year in prison for libel while serving as editor of the opposition magazine Neo-Formosa. While appealing the sentence, he ran for county magistrate in Tainan, southern Taiwan. Three days after losing the election, his wife was hit twice by a truck and left paralyzed from the waist down.
Chen lost his appeal in May 1986 and began serving eight months in jail. In 1989, he was elected to the Legislative Yuan, or parliament. In his two terms as legislator, from 1989-1994, Chen earned a reputation as an aggressive critic of the ruling Kuomintang party (KMT).
In 1994, he became mayor of Taipei by a narrow margin. Four years later, the KMT and New Party rallied behind a KMT candidate and thwarted his re-election. Chen capitalized on an internal struggle within the KMT and a deeply divided electorate to win a hard-fought presidential race in 2000. His main campaign planks were cleaning up corruption and deepening Taiwan's de facto independence.
Chen this week said he did not care what ruling was handed down and repeated that he was the victim of "political persecution" by the KMT, according to the Taipei Times.
"Let it be. At least my heart is free. Everything is changing now and I believe there will be changes soon," he wrote in an article for the first issue of a relaunched Neo Formosa Weekly, which resumed publication in electronic form on Thursday. "What irony that Taiwan's democracy has regressed so much," the Taipei Times report said.
The announcement of Chen's conviction came after the local stock market closed. With a weekend for investors to digest the news, its impact on market sentiment is likely to be limited, an analyst said, citing a strong earnings outlook as companies at home and overseas restock inventories and on rising demand for their products from China and other Asian countries.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
By Asia Times Online staff
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Former Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian was sentenced to life imprisonment and fined NT$200 million (US$6 million) on corruption charges by a Taipei District Court on Friday, according to Taiwan media reports. Chen has maintained his innocence and called the case "politically motivated".
The charges against Chen included embezzlement, accepting bribes and money laundering during his two terms as Taiwan's leader from 2000 to 2008. Prosecutors claimed in the trial that Chen took nearly US$15 million from state coffers during his presidency and hid the graft with forged documents and secret Swiss bank accounts.
An appeal is automatic, but it will be hard for Chen to overturn the conviction "as he was convicted of many charges and the verdicts
were based on evidence, and not politics," Timothy Wong Ka-ying, associate director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at Chinese University of Hong Kong, told Asia Times Online.
Prosecutors said last year that more than US$30 million of Chen family finances were remitted to accounts in Singapore and the Cayman Islands, then moved to Swiss bank accounts, according to Bloomberg. The former first family agreed to return US$21 million to Taiwan, the report said.
In final statements, the prosecution accused Chen, 58, of having "acted shamefully and with total lack of conscience", according to local media. His wheelchair-bound wife, ** Shu-chen, earlier convicted of perjury, was also given a life sentence on Friday for corruption.
Eyewitnesses said hundreds of Chen's supporters protested outside the central Taipei courtroom with banners reading "Chen's innocent" and "Free him". Still, Chen had not been optimistic about Friday's verdict.
"I will be given the heaviest penalty, life imprisonment, and continue to be held in detention," he told Taiwan's Apple Daily while in detention before the trial. Chen has been detained since December. Chen said Thursday afternoon he would not attend the court to hear the verdict, Taiwan-based United Evening News reported.
Chen's stiff sentence was enhanced by the alleged scope of his abuse of power and for his "uncooperative attitude toward a judicial probe", Hong Kong-based Next Magazine reported, citing legal experts. Others see the event as a benchmark ruling for Taiwan's judiciary.
"Issuing a verdict on Chen is very important to Taiwan because it is the time to see if a corrupt official can be severely punished or [if] Taiwan's judicial system is trustworthy," said Qiu Yi, a Kuomintang lawmaker, to local media.
Earlier this week, Chen's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) pledged to "spare no efforts to support Chen", according to local media. Chen, long a pro-independence advocate for Taiwan, has insisted the charges against him and his family stemmed from Taiwan's current President Ma Ying-jeou, a vocal proponent of improved ties with mainland China.
"Chen's possible conviction will spiritually deal a big blow to Taiwan's pro-independence forces. Chen has always labeled himself as a pro-independence forerunner, and the forerunner will probably spend the rest of his life in prison," Wang Jianmin, of the Institute of Taiwan Studies of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
Rise to the top
Born in 1951 in southern Taiwan to a poor sugarcane factory worker father and an illiterate day laborer mother, Chen excelled academically and graduated in law from the National Taiwan University in 1974.
As a young lawyer, Chen made a name for himself in 1979 with a prominent defense of political dissidents jailed by Taiwan's then martial-law government. This paved his route into the opposition DPP camp. Two years later, he was elected to Taipei City council.
In January 1985, Chen was sentenced to a year in prison for libel while serving as editor of the opposition magazine Neo-Formosa. While appealing the sentence, he ran for county magistrate in Tainan, southern Taiwan. Three days after losing the election, his wife was hit twice by a truck and left paralyzed from the waist down.
Chen lost his appeal in May 1986 and began serving eight months in jail. In 1989, he was elected to the Legislative Yuan, or parliament. In his two terms as legislator, from 1989-1994, Chen earned a reputation as an aggressive critic of the ruling Kuomintang party (KMT).
In 1994, he became mayor of Taipei by a narrow margin. Four years later, the KMT and New Party rallied behind a KMT candidate and thwarted his re-election. Chen capitalized on an internal struggle within the KMT and a deeply divided electorate to win a hard-fought presidential race in 2000. His main campaign planks were cleaning up corruption and deepening Taiwan's de facto independence.
Chen this week said he did not care what ruling was handed down and repeated that he was the victim of "political persecution" by the KMT, according to the Taipei Times.
"Let it be. At least my heart is free. Everything is changing now and I believe there will be changes soon," he wrote in an article for the first issue of a relaunched Neo Formosa Weekly, which resumed publication in electronic form on Thursday. "What irony that Taiwan's democracy has regressed so much," the Taipei Times report said.
The announcement of Chen's conviction came after the local stock market closed. With a weekend for investors to digest the news, its impact on market sentiment is likely to be limited, an analyst said, citing a strong earnings outlook as companies at home and overseas restock inventories and on rising demand for their products from China and other Asian countries.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
