Money-Power Alliances When Lawsuits Spreading

Wealthy businessman Weng Mao-chung deliberately cultivated relationships with judicial officials, fearlessly leveraging his strong connections in the legal sector to secure favorable judgments in his cases. Control Yuan Members Wang Mei-yu and Kao Yung-cheng recently submitted an investigation report revealing that, in addition to former President of the Commission for Disciplinary Sanctions of Public Functionaries Shih Mu-chin, nine other high-ranking officials in the judiciary, prosecution, investigation, and police systems (among whom Fang Wan-fu became a "Ma-faction Control Yuan Member" and recently stepped down after his term ended) also had improper contacts with Weng and traded stocks, requesting the Executive Yuan and Judicial Yuan to investigate and penalize them in accordance with the law.

Between 1997 and 2017, Shih Mu-chin frequently dined and played golf with Weng Mao-chung, and provided legal opinions on cases involving Weng. When Weng's case was appealed to the third instance, Shih, then a judge at the Supreme Court, continued his improper contact and failed to recuse himself from related cases as required by law. Shih even traded stocks of businesses operated by Weng for profit, severely damaging judicial impartiality. The Judicial Yuan referred him to the Control Yuan, which passed an impeachment resolution and transferred the entire case to the Disciplinary Court (housing the Disciplinary Chamber) for adjudication.

Shih Mu-chin argued that his meetings and phone calls with Weng Mao-chung were based on a 30-year friendship, and that actions taken before the implementation of the Judges Act in July 2012 mostly exceeded the 10-year statutory period for disciplinary punishment stipulated in Article 25, Paragraph 3 of the former Public Functionaries Disciplinary Act, and thus should be exempt from disciplinary action. The Control Yuan argued that neither the Constitution nor the Act on Control Yuan provides a statute of limitations for impeachment, nor do they contain provisions akin to the Code of Criminal Procedure requiring a disposition of non-prosecution when the statute of limitations for prosecution has expired. Therefore, the Yuan is duty-bound to exercise its power of impeachment regarding this major illegal conduct in order to uphold official discipline.

Impeachment Is Not Subject to the Restriction of the Statute of Limitations for Disciplinary Punishments

In reality, Shih Mu-chin's disciplinary infractions were extremely serious and spanned a period of 20 years. His "actions possessed continuity and integration" and should not be fragmented to apply different legal norms; the Judges Act, rather than the Public Functionaries Disciplinary Act, should still apply. According to the main text of Article 52, Paragraph 1 of the Judges Act: "Where a judge's conduct is subject to disciplinary action, if five years have elapsed from the day the conduct ended to the day the case was docketed in the Disciplinary Court, disciplinary actions consisting of a reduction of pension and retirement benefits, fines, or reprimands may no longer be imposed." However, if a judge has grounds for disciplinary sanctions such as "dismissal from the position of judge, with no future appointment as a public functionary," "removal from office," or "dismissal from the position of judge, with transfer to non-judicial positions," they are already unfit to serve as a judge. Similarly, if subject to disciplinary sanctions such as "deprivation of pension and retirement benefits or deprivation of retirement benefits," the severity of their disciplinary infractions is also quite grave; none of these are subject to the restrictions of the statutory period for the exercise of disciplinary power.

What disciplinary sanction Shih Mu-chin should receive and whether there are restrictions on the statutory period for exercising disciplinary power must both be determined by the Disciplinary Court; hence, the Control Yuan had no right from the outset to prejudge the statute of limitations of the case. As for whether the multiple high-ranking judicial and prosecutorial officials in this case were involved in disciplinary infractions and whether they should be subject to punitive measures, this depends on whether the statutory period for exercising disciplinary power is restricted, and the standard for judgment should not diverge from the Shih case.

Shih Mu-chin previously enjoyed a distinguished reputation and was appointed by the President as the President of the Commission for Disciplinary Sanctions of Public Functionaries. Occupying a high and powerful position, he abruptly resigned when the case came to light. The exposure of the Shih case stemmed from a search conducted by the Taipei District Prosecutors Office in accordance with the law, which seized 27 personal notebooks handwritten by Weng Mao-chung. These notebooks recorded 145 meetings and discussions on case details between the two over the years, prompting a report to the Judicial Yuan. The involvement of other high-ranking judicial figures—such as former Chief Prosecutor Fang Wan-fu (subsequently appointed as a Control Yuan Member), prosecutors Chu Hung-yü and Lo Jung-ch'ien, former Supreme Court judges Yen Nan-ch'üan, Hua Man-t'ang, and Hsieh Chia-ho, former President of the Supreme Administrative Court Lin Ch'i-fu, former Supreme Court Presiding Judge Wu Hsiung-ming, and Ch'in T'ai-sheng, who once served as the head of the Mobile Operations Division of the Taipei City Investigation Office—is also substantially recorded in these notebooks, rivaling the historical expose *A Record of a Hundred Officials*. Without these 27 notebooks as corroboration, how could the truth of the case have been revealed?

Regarding the supervision of judges, the Judges Act originally established multiple concurrent mechanisms: comprehensive evaluations by the Judicial Yuan, administrative supervision by judicial heads, judicial self-discipline, individual case evaluations, and impeachment by the Control Yuan followed by transfer to the Disciplinary Court for disciplinary adjudication.

According to Article 31 of the Judges Act as originally enacted, the Judicial Yuan conducted comprehensive evaluations of judges every three years, with the evaluation results serving as a reference for judicial performance assessment; if it was discovered that a judge had grounds warranting an individual case evaluation, the matter was to be referred to the Judges Evaluation Commission for an individual case evaluation. However, the results of comprehensive evaluations were not made public by law, and no judge was ever known to have been referred for evaluation on this basis. The statutory basis was consequently deleted by the Legislative Yuan in June 2019, with the reasoning roughly as follows: comprehensive evaluations conducted only once every few years have limited effectiveness; the evaluation of a judge's overall performance is adequately achieved through the annual performance assessment system.

Since the comprehensive judicial evaluation mechanism has been abolished and external evaluations are constrained by the covert nature of case details, one can only rely on internal administrative supervision by court heads and judicial self-discipline. Court presidents ought to fulfill their supervisory responsibilities over judges under their jurisdiction, proactively uncover unfitness under their jurisdiction, issue orders ex officio to prompt attention or issue warnings, or request individual case evaluations from the Judges Evaluation Commission in the name of their affiliated agency, thereby rewarding the excellent and weeding out the incompetent.

Relief Through Retrial Should Be Granted If Litigation Was Affected

Yet this case is special: money can make the ghosts push the grind. The wealthy businessman Weng's good friends in the legal sector are all extraordinary figures; Shih Mu-chung and multiple high-ranking officials were themselves court or prosecutors office heads who wielded administrative supervision powers. Among them, Fang Wan-fu even ascended to the Control Yuan, holding the potential to influence whether an impeachment motion would pass. The collusion of money and power was momentarily arrogant and overbearing. To set things right, the Judicial Yuan, the Ministry of Justice, and the Control Yuan all bear unshirkable responsibilities. If the long-term association between the wealthy businessman and high-ranking judicial figures has indeed swayed the outcome of related lawsuits, the judicial authorities ought to permit the initiation of retrial relief.

Pessimistically speaking, the Shih case may merely be the tip of the iceberg. Having suffered this profound loss, the judiciary must reform to let sunlight shine into the black boxes and dark corners within the judicial system, leaving all unfit judges nowhere to hide, and exorcising the demonic curse of "acquittal for the rich, conviction for the poor." Only thus can the trust of the people be won. Building a judiciary trusted by the people brooks no delay; the people are no longer willing to wait!

※ This article was published in the Apple Daily on Sep. 12, 2020