Proceedings put on hold as Chen heads to hospital

By Debby Wu  |   2008-11-12  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

FORMER Taiwan leader Chen Shui-bian was taken to a Taipei hospital yesterday, a law maker said, prompting the suspension of a court proceeding to determine whether he should be formally detained on corruption charges.

Lai Ching-te, of the Democratic Progressive Party, said the Taipei District Court ordered Chen, 57, to be evaluated for a possible injury he sustained earlier in the day en route to the court building.

Chen was in court when the ruling was issued. There was no additional information on the circumstances of the injury.

The development was a bizarre end for a day that began with Chen facing more than five hours of grilling from prosecutors investigating allegations of money laundering.

In the early afternoon, he was driven, handcuffed, from the prosecutors' office in downtown Taipei to the nearby court building.

Millions of Taiwan people revile Chen for permitting his government to be mired in an atmosphere of corruption.

His friends and close advisers have been imprisoned on a variety of graft charges, his wife is being tried for allegedly looting a special government fund, and Chen himself is facing a complex series of judicial inquiries.

Yesterday's questioning focused on allegations that Chen laundered money and made illegal use of the government fund during his eight years in office that ended in May.

Chen admitted in August that he broke the law by not fully disclosing campaign donations he had received, after a law maker alleged that Chen's son and daughter-in-law moved millions of dollars to Switzerland in 2007, and then forwarded the funds to the Cayman Islands.

Prosecutors then said they wanted to determine whether the funds were donations left over from political campaigns, as Chen insisted, or whether bribery might have been involved.

False declaration of donations is subject to a fine of US$9,670, but money laundering carries a seven-year prison sentence.