Ma Ying-jeou indicted for leaking of secrets

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2017/03/14/493510/BREAKING-Former.htm

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å­”å­ę›°ļ¼š payback is a bitch.

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But Doctor, doesnā€™t he have an advanced degree in polisci? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Yeah, but he went to a wild chicken university, where underperforming scions are accepted with a wink and a nod (and maybe a charitable donation or two).

Lawdy Lawdy. Seems a trend is happening. Retired Taiwanese Presidents end up in JAIL.

First Chennie and now they are trying to put the old horse in the slammer and make dog food out of him.

Next will come the current Lady President then? What kind of dirt are they heaping up on her?

Taiwan invites all ex foreign leaders on speaking tours and jails all its Presidents who are not Chiangs or Chiang cronies. Great huh?

And the US voted to elect either a Con Woman or a Con Man as the Pres. And the Con Man won.

Great huh?

All the Armies are rushing into areas where the refugees are leaving who are then rushing into the places where the armies came from. Guess this keeps the earth balanced?
Great huh?

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You should have heard last night the feng shui guy giving this detailed explanation of how all presidents end up badly because of bad feng shui at the Presidential Office, bad feng shui influence from so many parks nearby, especially 228, not because what happened there, but because it has these little lagoons and one has even a centerpiece that looks like a burial urnā€¦

30 minutes of TV for that?!

As to the Lady president, it is even worse: while there are who salivate at the prospect of jailing her for whatever, or ousting her a la Korean Prez, one fortune teller went one step ahead and predicted she will kill herself before her term is up. Seriously.

Wow. I di not expect this. More than feng shui, it seems like the Curse against the Teachers of Defense against the Dark Arts in the Harry Potter Universe:

After an indictment was issued against Ma over a wiretapping case on Tuesday, eight other cases under investigation against Ma were brought to the attention of the public, including the long-running Taipei Dome dispute, leaking of state secrets regarding the Ma-Xi Meeting, oversight of the Maokong Gondola, unaccounted special expense funds, income from unknown sources, mishandling of Kuomintang party assets, Fubon Bank merger case and National Development Research Institute land purchase scandals.

In 2016, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (ęŸÆę–‡å“²) accused Ma of unlawfully changing requirements over the Taipei Dome construction project in favor of Farglory Group during his term as Taipei mayor between 1998 and 2006. The change was said to have violated the spirit of BOT (build-operate-transfer) projects. The Taipei District Prosecutors Office began the case in early 2016 and summoned stakeholders to the office.

Lawyer Huang Di-ying (黃åøē©Ž) filed a complaint with prosecutors in November 2016 accusing Ma of leaking confidential details of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jingping (ēæ’čæ‘å¹³) in Singapore in late 2015 at a school forum a year later regarding the arrangements for his meeting.

In 2015, a Kuomintang member and attorney Wang Ko-fu (ēŽ‹åÆåƌ) filed a breach of trust against Ma along with 12 other former Kuomintang leaders for a drastic decline of party assets in the period between 2000 and 2006.

Among the cases is a high-profile corruption lawsuit against Ma over Fubon Bankā€™s merger with Taipei Bank, which resulted in the formation of Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank in 2002 while Ma was serving as mayor of Taipei. Ma was said to have helped Fubon make more than NT$30 billion in undue financial profit through the acquisition. Ma insisted that he has never received political contributions from Fubon in return.

Another corruption lawsuit against Ma involves a real estate deal in which a son of a landlord, who was forced to sell land in a suburb Taipei to the Kuomintang four decades ago, in 2009 accused then-Kuomintang Chairman Ma of creating favorable conditions for a certain conglomerate to profit when he was a mayor. The land was sold to a land developer in 2005, who saw the value of the property nearly double in four years.

There is so much dirt on him that it is not even remotely funny. What do you people know? The prosecutors seem eager. The judges? What happened to the judge which allowed Chen out on bail? He was hounded a fair bit, wasnā€™t he? Surely that would create a little resentment?

Unlike Chen, I see little revenge here. the DPP seems to be standing back allowing the dirt Ma created to drown him. That is a great step forward, however I do not think that if the KMT regains power, they will be as magnanimous, I expect the same revenge pettiness as they used against Chen.

It would surprise me if they lock up Ma for any extended period of time. It will be so much better for them to have him facing court case after court case, while the whole process is used to demolish the KMT. If thatā€™s what the DPP does, they will complete the democratization process here in Taiwan, and thatā€™s a great thing.

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As I have said before, I am unlikely to be mistaken for Maā€™s number one fan. But the prospect of jailing every head of state the minute they step down does not sound like a great way to run a country.

Guy

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Indeed creating a dictatorship as none will be willing to step down


(The article doesnā€™t actually say anything about the constitution.)

I think the judge was a classmate of Ma.

Problem is that the judges mostly come from a single rank file, as well as most of judiciary, civil servants, military, etc.

Hence, I find it quite sarcastic when they decry ā€œthe systemā€ which they themselves set up in placeā€¦ or rather, they complain that it is not working as it should because, lo and behold, some of the people break ranks. Imagine that in this day and age.

So far 3 consecutive presidents all went to NTU law, so it really isnā€™t about just being classmates. Thereā€™s a social class/party affiliation division between those classmates and I think that will play itself out again this round.

The problem is having those grey regulations and laws and procedures as murky as sewer waters. Like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, there is no way to avoid being struck. I mean, the money for fabiao thing was SOP, suddenly is illegal, for instance.

If this development doesnā€™t deserve a separate thread, perhaps we could restyle this as the ā€œMaā€™s legal troublesā€ thread.

Opening old woundsā€¦

ā€œThe [now-defunct] Special Investigation Division conducted a thorough investigation that lasted for several years and found no evidence of illegal conduct, so the case was closed in 2014,ā€ Hsu said.

The Taipei District Prosecutorsā€™ Office reopened the probe based on separate applications filed by the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee and attorney Chou Wu-jung (å‘Øꭦꦮ).

High court verdict: Ma sentenced to four months in jail (commutable to a NT$120,000 fine) for violating the Communication Security and Surveillance Act. Ma is expected to appeal:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-15/former-taiwan-president-ma-found-guilty-of-leaking-information-jh74bj91

Some analysis from Michael Turton, who argues that this case bears no resemblance to past routine legal action again DPP members:

Guy

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no

I hate Maā€™s policies with a passion, but putting political prisoners in jail is just dumb. Guess Taiwan is a third-world Banana Republic.

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beat me to it.

@OysterOmelet

ā€œputting political prisoners in jail is just dumb. Guess Taiwan is a third-world Banana Republicā€

Please have a look at the links above. Youā€™ll see that Turton is arguing the opposite:

Is this indictment some kind of pan-Green revenge? Hardly. This case began in September of 2013. By December of that SID Chief Huang was indicted for his role in the case. For the last few years knowledgeable observers have speculated that Ma sooner or later would come under prosecutorial scrutiny for making the wiretaps public. Moreover, SID Chief Huang was investigated, indicted, and convicted when the Administration was Blue. This case did not suddenly appear under the Tsai Administration.

Guy