An arrest warrant was issued on Wednesday for former Tainan county council speaker Wu Chien-pao (吳健保) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), who disappeared before he could start to serve his conviction linked to baseball game-fixing scandals that started in the 2006 season.
Wu was supposed to report to the Tainan District Prosecutors Office at 10am on Tuesday to start serving a three-year-and-two-month sentence, but he did not appear.
Judiciary officials said Wu would be put on the wanted list.
His family told police that Wu has not been seen for more than a month and they had not been able to contact him by telephone for the past two weeks.
There are rumors that he has fled to the Philippines.
After being convicted of blackmail, breach of trust and other charges for being one of the masterminds behind game-fixing scandals that tarnished the reputation of the Chinese Professional Baseball League and several players, he — along with 35 baseball players and several gang members — was sentenced on Aug. 13.
Wu and the other principals were found guilty of enticing baseball players to throw games with offers of money, sex with female escorts or threat of violence.
Wu served two terms as Tainan County council speaker from 2002 to 2010, before the county merged with Tainan city to become Greater Tainan.
Wu retains a great deal of political clout in Greater Taiwan, and was working to help his son, Wu Yu-huan (吳禹寰), win a seat on a councilor seat for the upcoming election in November.
Wu reportedly did not want to go to prison because the publicity it would create might hurt his son’s campaign.
The baseball scandal is not the first time Wu has been sentenced to prison.
In May 2011, he was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to three-year-and-a-half years in the first ruling by the Greater Tainan branch of the Taiwan High Court for his role in illegal sand-and-gravel quarrying on the Tseng-wen River (曾文溪).
Wu and 25 others had been indicted in August 2004 on charges of bribing officials, breaking government procurement laws and colluding to steal public assets in connection with a river-dredging contract won by Wu and former Tainan city councilor Lee Chuan-fu (李全富).
Wu was removed as council speaker following the verdict, and unusually, prosecutors sought to have him report to prison just a week later and dispatched police officers to monitor his movements.
However, Wu appealed the ruling — but vowed he had no intention of leaving the country to avoid going to prison.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS