2011/05/20 16:36:47

http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?Type=aSOC&ID=201105200015

Taipei, May 20 (CNA) Former Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) Director-General Yeh Sheng-mao saw his jail sentence reduced to six years Friday.

The verdict and sentence came from the appellant trial over his mishandling of intelligence concerning the case of money laundering of former President Chen Shui-bian and a separate case of alleged influence peddling implicating a legislator.

The Taiwan High Court found Yeh guilty of concealing a government file in the first case, for which he was given a prison sentence of three years and nine months.

In the second case, he was convicted of leaking confidential information, for which he received two and a half years in prison.

The two sentences will be combined into a jail term of six years.

The government file concealment conviction can be appealed, while the confidential information leakage conviction is final, which means he will need to begin serving his sentence soon.

At the center of the money-laundering case was a report delivered to the MJIB in January 2008 through the international anti-money laundering organization Egmont Group, in which its Cayman Islands' financial intelligence unit raised the suspicion that the former first family was laundering money through an account created under the name of Chen's daughter-in-law Huang Jui-ching at a Merrill Lynch Bank in Geneva, Switzerland.

Using this report, MJIB's Anti-Money Laundering Center on Jan. 29 compiled a file intended for delivery to the Supreme Prosecutors Office.

Yeh later requested that the file be handed over to him, saying that he would pass it to State Public Prosecutor General Chen Tsung-ming in person. However, instead of giving the file to the public prosecutor, Yeh leaked its contents to Chen Shui-bian during a visit to the former president's residence between Jan. 31 and Feb. 1.

In the second conviction, Yeh was found to have leaked a plan by prosecutors and investigators to raid the offices of Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Ker Chien-ming in April 2008 in an investigation into Ker's alleged involvement in an illegal mining operation in the eastern county of Hualien.

After his cases were heard at the lower district court level, Yeh was found guilty of graft in Chen's case and sentenced to eight and a half years, plus an additional two and a half years for Ker's case. That court had decided to combine the two sentences to 10 years, and deprive Yeh of his civil rights for an additional five years.

The Taiwan High Court, however, determined that Yeh should be convicted of concealing a government file, instead of graft, which carries a lighter sentence.

His sentence for the second charge was upheld. (By Lai Yu-chia and Y.F. Low)