By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday that it supported a retrial or an extraordinary appeal for senior politicians Hong Chi-chang (洪奇昌) and Wu Nai-jen (吳乃仁), who in March were convicted of breach of trust in an apparently flawed case.
“The party’s Central Standing Committee has reached a resolution to call for a retrial or an extraordinary appeal by the prosecutor-general, to prove Hong and Wu’s innocence,” DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said after the party’s weekly standing committee meeting.
Former premier Yu Shyi-kun said he supported the appeal, because prosecutors and judges had failed to convict the two politicans with convincing evidence of any crime.
The High Court’s Taichung branch on March 13 upheld the original conviction, handing Hong, a former DPP legislator, a two-year-and-four-month prison term and senior DPP politician Wu Nai-jen (吳乃仁) a prison term of three years and 10 months for breach of trust in a case involving the sale of state-owned property belonging to Taiwan Sugar Corp (Taisugar, 台糖) in Greater Taichung in 2003.
Citing new evidence, Hong on April 8 demanded a retrial. A decision on his appeal is still pending because of an ongoing case review by the High Court.
The Control Yuan answered Hong’s appeal in a reply on April 17 and demanded that the Ministry of Justice investigate the case further to see if there is evidence that favors the conviction.
Hong and Wu were scheduled to begin serving their prison terms on May 6, but have submitted applications for temporary respite and transfer of jurisdiction, as both were moving their household registrations from Taipei City to Yilan County.