Prosecutors yesterday added fraud to the list of charges against businessman Lin Chih-chung (林治崇), who allegedly acted as a middleman to secure military contracts by bribing officers with cash and prostitutes.
Banciao District Court prosecutors allege Lin tried to convince Colonel Yang Tung-shan (楊東山) that he could help him gain promotion by saying he had influence with former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Ma Yung-cheng (馬永成) and former premier Chiou I-jen (邱義仁).
Prosecutors said they launched an investiagtion after receiving a tip-off from some of Lin’s bodyguards.
After Lin allegedly failed to pay money he owed to the bodyguards, they approached prosecutors with information about Lin’s alleged forgery of official recommendation letters from the Presidential Office.
The forged recommendation letters were one of the tools Lin used in bribing the colonel, prosecutors said, adding that Lin wanted to gain the colonel’s trust so that he could obtain information about military contracts and receive kickbacks from arranging business deals.
Prosecutors suspect that Chou Chih-kang (周志綱), who stands accused of heading a group of alleged conspirators, was also involved in bribing Yang.
Lin was indicted on bribery and blackmail charges in April.
Prosecutors alleged that he had used the same approach on former lieutenant-general Yuan Hsiao-lung (袁肖龍) by showing him a recommendation letter from then-Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) in an attempt to convince Yuan that he could help him gain promotion.
Cho told prosecutors that he never wrote such a letter for Yuan, while the Presidential Office has also said there was no record of such a letter.
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