The Changhua District Court yesterday turned down prosecutors’ request to detain a Changhua County Government official suspected of involvement in graft.
Changhua County Government official Chen Hsueh-li (陳雪莉), who formerly served as the director of the county’s environmental protection bureau, was instead released on bail of NT$300,000.
Investigators on Tuesday searched the county government’s offices, as well as the offices of the environmental protection bureau and some contractors.
Prosecutors said that they suspect Chen was involved in at least four questionable tenders during her tenure as the bureau chief, such as a procurement project for facilities to test the county’s underground water.
Chen allegedly received NT$3 million (US$101,567) in bribes in exchange for leaking names of evaluation committee members to a contractor surnamed Cheng (鄭), and for helping him win bids, prosecutors said.
Cheng was released on NT$200,000 bail.
This case marks the latest in a series of graft investigations against the county government.
The allegations of corruption have seriously damaged the local government’s reputation, with Changhua County Commissioner Cho Po-yuan (卓伯源) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) accused by a local businessman of demanding kickbacks in a golf club development project, while Cho’s younger brother, Cho Po-chung (卓伯仲), is suspected of manipulating several tenders, including those for souvenir bags, ceramics and calendars which Cho Po-yuan distributed to supporters in the county, and for also allegedly receiving kickbacks from a contractor.
Cho Po-chung has been detained by the district court, while sources said that Cho Po-yuan is likely to be summoned for questioning by prosecutors after they have finished strengthening their case against him.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
RSS