Shackled Taiwanese official kneeling before her father’s coffin

It’s likely she had to agree to this condition to be allowed to attend the funeral. Even in other countries, there are escorts and other restrictions if participating in a prison furlough.

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?? Since when has the US government ever intervened in sexually illegal behavior on a cruise ship?? Cruise ships are always registered somewhere other than a US territory and it’s virtually impossible to be convicted for rape or assault (sexual or physical) because no one actually really technically has jurisdiction over the ship unless it’s at a port. In which case good luck getting the cops in the Bahamas or wherever you’ve landed to care. That’s been one of those “the dark side of the cruise industry” things for a while now.

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I don’t know Chinese.

Does anybody know whether 頭詐領助理費* is the same as 回扣? The articles I’ve seen on this case don’t seem to mention the second term, just the first one.

For right now, I’m just curious.

*I hope I didn’t include any superfluous characters or exclude any essential ones.

You excluded 人, so it should be 人頭詐領助理費. The “human heads” refer to dummy accounts she created in order to claim government subsidies for hiring assistants. Different from 回扣 which is kickbacks. Hardly a heinous crime.

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Thanks, @Incubus!

In my opinion, abuse of power is particularly heinous because it represents a lack of faith in the system. It erodes the sanctity of the office and a betrayal to the community at large.

Far more serious than a normal person stealing from the store or even corporate fraud

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I don’t know the full case but my guess is it’s off the coast of the US or the ship is registered with the US, or maybe if not it was close enough to the US for the fed to care. All I heard was what the judge said to him. In the US they line like 4 or 5 cases together and sentence/plead guilty as a group, one by one in one session. My guess is because they have so much cases if they had to devote a session to one person the court would overload. The judge only said that he had sex with an underaged person and that his age was over x amount over the girl (meaning Romeo and Juliet laws do not apply), and that act occurred in a place the US has jurisdiction but not a state, meaning it was on a ship where the US has jurisdiction.

Basically she claimed that she was hiring an assistant to get the money, then didn’t hire anyone and kept the money for herself.

So it’s fraud/theft.

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From Focus Taiwan:

The article goes on to say that the lower court ordered her released on bail, but the prosecutors appealed to the High Court in Tainan, which remanded the case back to the lower court, desiring that the lower court elaborate on its reasons for the pretrial release. It further says that on remand, the lower court ordered her detained.

Chiang I-ching and Evelyn Kao, “Chiayi City councilor ordered detained for embezzlement,” March 13, 2022

Regarding her status, the Yahoo article uses the term “suspected,” and the Focus Taiwan article uses the term “suspicion.”

Am I safe in concluding there has been no formal accusation?

I’ve noticed that here, in English-language newspaper accounts over the years, variations of the term indict have been used. But as far as I know, Taiwan doesn’t have grand juries. I’m not saying they’re wrong to say indictment; that’s none of my business. I’m just mentioning in passing that it always sounds a little odd to me, because in the US, a formal accusation without a grand jury’s say-so is usually called a bill of information.

The thing is, though, I haven’t seen the word indictment or indicted yet.

Does that mean that she hasn’t been formally accused yet? Or has something been lost in translation? Or did I misread (or rely too heavily on Google Translate)?

Or is there something about the structure of Taiwan’s criminal justice system that I’m just not clued-up on?

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In Taiwan a prosecutor issues “indictments” or submits the case to a summary court. No grand juries involved. Summary court are for less serious cases because there are limits on what they can impose as a sentence. But in Chinese it’s simply called “beginning of charge”, not really “indictments”.

Grand jury is useless in the US anyways as they will indict a ham sandwich. Basically if your case is submitted you will be indicted. Defense attorneys aren’t even allowed in an indictment session.

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Has/have the prosecutor(s) done that yet? Is that what the articles mean by suspicion and suspected?

Lol. I personally know people who embezzled significantly more than that and they’re happily living their government job life as if nothing happened at all. Actually, there were gag orders on the victims.

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I don’t know about her personal wealth, but even with 5m NTD, it’s less than 200k USD. Hardly enough to plan an escape worthwhile and hide somewhere. I don’t know all the details, but it seems an ankle monitor and some people there would be sufficient.

I don’t know what evidence they have, it’s entirely possible she is guilty of a serious crime against her own people. But it’s also not unheard of for these things to be BS and based on politics.

You’d be surprised the lengths people will go (hint: not very far) to dodge prison time.

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True, but I would think an ankle monitor is a better deterrent than shackles if she was to make an escape.

I’d have to know more of the details. The shackles seem like a pretty strong deterrent to escape though? How do you mean?

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I 100% agree. Laws are there to be followed. "Probably"and “a matter of time” etc are not convicted. If convicted she should be thankful to attend in any capacity. But seems she isnt yet and we have to respect that.

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I don’t know enough about Taiwanese culture to know how much choice she felt she had in that matter, and I obviously can’t predict the future about her legal problems, but if it was indeed her choice, it might turn out to have been a helpful one for her.

I think its called the pitty card. And it does play out quite well in Taiwan, more often than not. Make yourself look like a victim even if guilty. An age old practice that works well in countries with some form of compassion in their society coupled with a decent enough level of freedom and human rights. In all honesty i would do the same. I might even claim i am pregnant and being treated horribly. Despite being male. just for those few dummy pitty points. Thats the difference between 5 and 10 years, face is already out the window :wink: her lawyer has done this before…

Wtf is a “pitty”?

One of these?

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