A Taipei city councilor and her former office assistant were yesterday indicted on suspicion of embezzling NT$267,219 of public funds.
Independent Taipei City Councilor Lin Ying-meng (林穎孟) and Yeh Yao-chang (葉曜彰) were charged with contravening the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) and the Criminal Code, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said.
Lin was elected in December 2018 and is one of 12 councilors representing the city’s Daan (大安) and Wenshan (文山) districts. She was a member of the New Power Party from 2017 to 2020.
Photo: Cheng Ming-hsiang, Taipei Times
On Dec. 5, 2018, Lin hired Yeh as a publicly funded assistant and on Dec. 25 that year recruited a student surnamed Yang (楊) to work part-time at her office, prosecutors said.
Yang worked for Lin until Sept. 18, 2019, but Lin applied for a subsidy of NT$35,563 from the city to help cover Yang’s pay for October that year, prosecutors said.
There were more issues the following year after Yeh left his job in Lin’s office and started a public relations firm on March 31, 2020, prosecutors said.
Lin allegedly helped Yeh, who was her boyfriend at the time, forge documents to obtain city funds to pay the salary of an employee, surnamed Kuo (郭), at his firm starting in April 2020, prosecutors said.
Lin registered Kuo as her assistant and put her on the city’s payroll, defrauding the city of NT$231,656, prosecutors said.
Lin and Yeh have denied the allegations.
Lin told prosecutors that Yang had worked in her office until the end of October 2019 and that Kuo worked as an office assistant for her while also serving as her ex-boyfriend’s employee.
Regulations state that an elected councilor in any of the six special municipalities can hire up to eight assistants to conduct research on policy issues and provide services to constituents. They can be paid up to NT$80,000 per month in public funds.
CAUTION: Based on intelligence from the nation’s security agencies, MOFA has cautioned Taiwanese travelers about heightened safety risks in China-friendly countries The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday urged Taiwanese to be aware of their safety when traveling abroad, especially in countries that are friendly to China. China in June last year issued 22 guidelines that allow its courts to try in absentia and sentence to death so-called “diehard” Taiwanese independence activists, even though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction in Taiwan. Late last month, a senior Chinese official gave closed-door instructions to state security units to implement the guidelines in countries friendly to China, a government memo and a senior Taiwan security official said, based on information gathered by Taiwan’s intelligence agency. The
The National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday that it will revoke the dependent-based residence permit of a Chinese social media influencer who reportedly “openly advocated for [China’s] unification through military force” with Taiwan. The Chinese national, identified by her surname Liu (劉), will have her residence permit revoked in accordance with Article 14 of the “Measures for the permission of family- based residence, long-term residence and settlement of people from the Mainland Area in the Taiwan Area,” the NIA said in a news release. The agency explained it received reports that Liu made “unifying Taiwan through military force” statements on her online
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said yesterday that it is looking to hire 8,000 people this year, at a time when the tech giant is expanding production capacity to maintain its lead over competitors. To attract talent, TSMC would launch a large-scale recruitment campaign on campuses across Taiwan, where a newly recruited engineer with a master’s degree could expect to receive an average salary of NT$2.2 million (US$60,912), which is much higher than the 2023 national average of NT$709,000 for those in the same category, according to government statistics. TSMC, which accounted for more than 60 percent
Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢), a Taiwanese businessman and deputy convener of the nation’s National Climate Change Committee, said yesterday that “electrical power is national power” and nuclear energy is “very important to Taiwan.” Tung made the remarks, suggesting that his views do not align with the country’s current official policy of phasing out nuclear energy, at a forum organized by the Taiwan People’s Party titled “Challenges and Prospects of Taiwan’s AI Industry and Energy Policy.” “Taiwan is currently pursuing industries with high added- value and is developing vigorously, and this all requires electricity,” said the chairman
RSS