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| Taiwan's former President Chen Shui-bian enters a police van at the Toucheng detention center to be escorted to the district court for the first day of his formal trial on corruption charges in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, March 26, 2009. | ||
The trial of former President Chen Shui-bian begins Thursday, a climactic development in a long-running legal process that has captivated millions of Taiwanese and focused renewed attention on the island's rapidly evolving democracy.
The proceedings follow two months of pretrial hearings to review key elements in the case against Chen who left office last May after serving two four-year terms his wife Wu Shu-chen, their son, daughter-in-law and several aides and associates.
Prosecutors indicted both Chen and Wu last December on charges of embezzling 104 million New Taiwan dollars ($3.12 million) from a special presidential fund, receiving bribes worth at least $9 million in connection with a government land procurement deal and laundering part of the funds by wiring the money to Swiss bank accounts.
Chen has denied the charges, while Wu has pleaded guilty to laundering $2.2 million and forging official documents. If convicted, Chen is liable to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Millions of Taiwanese have been engrossed by the spectacle of the former leader being accused of the same type of corruption he pledged to eradicate when he first ran for president in 2000.
The indictments outline a complex scheme in which Chen allegedly allowed his wife to take bribes from businesspeople seeking political favors.
Chen's defense strategy has been to profess ignorance of those alleged transactions, stressing that the former first lady alone managed millions of dollars in political donations and other funds.
At one hearing, Chen argued that Wu had received 200 million New Taiwan dollars (US$5.8 million) from a land owner as a political donation, not as a bribe. He told the three-judge panel that he had pushed for the purchase of a tract of the businessman's land because it was in the state's interest to use it to build an industrial park.
While analysts say that much of the pretrial evidence against the self-proclaimed reformer seems overwhelming, they suggest that prosecutors will be hard pressed to present concrete proof to convict him of taking bribes.
"There are many gray areas that Chen could use for his defense," said political commentator Huang Chih-hsien.
"Unlike America, Hong Kong or Singapore, we cannot convict a politician simply for failing to prove his wealth has come from legitimate means," Huang said. "The prosecutor must also prove that a deal was struck to hand out political favors in exchange for bribes."
In contrast to Chen, analysts say, Wu's conviction on the charges she hasn't admitted to appears likely, because several suspects have already testified against her.
One former presidential cashier testified last week to having moved stacks of cash from the presidential office to the former first couple's home on Wu's orders.
"Sometimes the safe could not store that much cash, so bags of cash had to be laid on the floor," Chen Chen-hui said in her testimony.
Chen has been held in a suburban Taipei detention center since late December after judges accepted prosecutors' arguments that he presented a flight risk.
Critics blasted the decision to detain him as politically biased, citing the court's last-minute replacement of a panel of judges who had originally ordered him free.
But the government insists that the former leader is being treated in strict accordance with the law, and that all his constitutional rights are being upheld.
(AP)
