Taiwan's ex-president arrested on money laundering allegations

Taipei: Former Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian, a strong advocate of formal independence from China, was arrested on Wednesday in connection with money-laundering allegations he has described as political persecution.

Chen, 58, president from 2000 to 2008, was detained on Tuesday after being questioned for most of the day.

Following a night of deliberation, the Taipei district court arrested Chen and sent him to jail, a court official said. He is Taiwan's first former president to be arrested.

Chen's arrest, and suspicion surrounding others in the case, has cast a shadow over his Democratic Progressive Party, now the main opposition after its landslide defeat in legislative and presidential elections earlier this year.

Chen has cast himself as a victim in the case, saying the aggressive investigation is the result of behind-the-scenes pressure from the ruling Nationalist Party (KMT), whose policy of closer ties with China contrasts sharply contentious cross-strait relations under Chen's administration.

The former first family is suspected of sending at least T$1 billion ($30.4 million) to Japan, the United States, the Cayman Islands, Singapore and Switzerland, among other places, the Supreme Court prosecutor's office has told local media.

Photos of Chen filled the front pages of newspapers on Wednesday, his hands raised in the air to show off his handcuffs as he left the prosecutor's office the day before.

At the regular news conference of China's State Council Taiwan Affairs Office on Wednesday, spokeswoman Fan Liqing called Chen's comments that his arrest was the joint work of the Nationalists and Chinese Communist party "pure fabrication."

China has claimed self-ruled Taiwan as its territory since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and pledged to bring the island under its rule, by force if necessary.