Former Tainan mayor Shih Chih-ming (
"Prosecutors received information that Shih might attempt to leave the country, so we urgently arrested him and sent him to prison," said Shih Yun-hong (施韻宏), the Tainan Prosecutors' Office official in charge of Shih's arrest. "Shih was previously indicted for accepting bribes from another construction company, but he stayed overseas for a long time to avoid likely imprisonment. So Shih's record showed he might escape after a final verdict was given."
On Thursday, the Supreme Court sentenced Shih Chih-ming to eight years and six months in jail for receiving NT$20 million (US$623,198) in bribes from a construction company in 1993, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) member was serving as Tainan mayor.
Shih Yun-hong said that prosecutors asked the Supreme Court to immediately forward the papers on Shih Chih-ming's verdict to the prosecutors' office on Thursday, and then directed police and agents of the Ministry of Justice's Investigation Bureau to track him.
The prosecutor said that Shih Chih-ming had been sick and was staying at the Tainan hospital. On Friday afternoon, over doctors' objections because he still needed medical treatment, Shih Chih-ming asked the hospital to release him. He left the hospital at 3:30pm.
When prosecutors were informed that Shih Chih-ming had left the hospital, they immediately sent police and agents of the investigation bureau to look for him, suspecting he was at his girlfriend's residence.
The prosecutor said that late Friday, police monitoring the residence saw signs that Shih Chih-ming was likely staying there, and decided to raid the residence and arrest him early yesterday morning.
According to the prosecutor, Shih Chih-ming was shocked by the raid, and was in the middle of packing. He knelt down in front of the prosecutors, begged them to give him several days before sending him to the prison, and promised he would not try to escape.
Shih Chih-ming is temporarily being detained in a prison in Tainan, but will do his time at at Kaohsiung prison.
The prosecutor said that they had decided to swoop down on him after incidents in which politicians have fled the country after being found guilty of crimes.
Wu Tse-yuan (
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A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck off Taitung County at 1:09pm today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 53km northeast of Taitung County Hall at a depth of 12.5km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Taitung County and Hualien County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Nantou County, Chiayi County, Yunlin County, Kaohsiung and Tainan, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage following the quake.
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