Taichung prosecutors yesterday indicted former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and his wife on corruption and forgery charges following last month’s judicial probe into alleged fraudulent transactions and illegal acquisition of public land to build a NT$90 million (US$2.9 million) family mansion in the city.
Evidence gathered by Taichung prosecutors and the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau indicated that Yen forged documents and receipts to collect wages for an office assistant during his second term as a lawmaker from 2016 to 2020, the indictment read.
Investigators last month searched Yen’s mansion and offices. Yen and his wife, Chen Li-ling (陳麗淩), were summoned for questioning and released on bail of NT$10 million and NT$5 million respectively.
Photo: CNA
Prosecutors said that when he was a lawmaker, Yen hired Lin Chin-fu (林進福), the owner of a construction company affiliated to Yen’s family businesses, to work as a “legislative office assistant” and received NT$960,000 in wages from January 2018 to January 2020.
However, evidence showed that Lin spent most of that period in Taichung managing his business and did not work as an office assistant in Taipei, prosecutors said, adding that they have evidence of Yen personally collecting and using the assistant’s monthly wage.
The wage, in addition to filings for overtime work and other expenses, amounted to NT$1.08 million, prosecutors said.
They said that investigators had uncovered receipts showing that Lin had bought a Maserati sedan, registered under his company, which is under Yen’s possession for his family’s use.
The indictment pertaining to the mansion charged Yen and his wife with forgery, and his younger brother of illegally occupying public land and related offenses.
Prosecutors said that the sale of the mansion last year, when it came under scrutiny during Yen’s legislative by-election campaign, was fake as Yen had sold it at half of its market value to Taichung-based Jazz Space Design company owner, a woman surnamed Chang (張).
Prosecutors said that it was a fraudulent transaction, as Yen still has furniture at the mansion and family members were seen at the property.
Evidence also showed that Yen, his wife and Lin had forked out NT$45 million as a “loan” to Chang to help her with the “bogus purchase” of the mansion, prosecutors said.
Yen yesterday denied any wrongdoing, saying he had not broken the law and that he was being politically prosecuted to prevent him from running in next year’s legislative election. He has been nominated by the KMT in an attempt to regain his old seat in Taichung.
KMT Taichung City Chapter officials released a statement saying that as the litigation has not been settled, it would not affect the party’s nomination of Yen.
It urged people to vote for Yen and use their ballot to fight an “unjust” system.
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