Public prosecutors indicted 15 people yesterday — five former city government officials and 10 members of Ysolar Group (力暘集團) — after an investigation into a controversial solar energy project in Tainan’s Cigu District (七股)
The case involved former Tainan Economic Development Bureau chief Chen Kai-ling (陳凱凌) and his subordinate officials who were acccused of revising regulations and circumventing procedures to secure land for Ysolar Group projects, in a scheme projected to net NT$9.126 billion over 20 years, the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office said.
Ysolar Group president Ku Sheng-hui (古盛煇) and general manager Hsu Shuo-ting (徐碩廷), two principal figures in the case, were indicted, along with executives of five subsidiary companies of Ysolar Group for their involvement, prosecutors said.
Photo: Wang Chieh, Taipei Times
During the investigation, prosecutors said they carried out six raids to serve summons and gather evidence, and took in 246 people for questioning.
Ku and his five subsidiary companies purchased land in Cigu District in 2020 and 2021, with plans to set up photovoltaic panels for general solar energy, prosecutors said, adding that the companies hoped to receive government subsidies for the project.
Ku allegedly colluded with Chen and his subordinates to circumvent restrictions on “plots of land of under two hectares” and to revise regulations through illicit means to permit the construction of a solar energy project on agricultural land, the indictment filing showed.
Chen and his officials assisted in the falsifying of documents, instructing Ku’s companies to revise the dates on application papers for the planned projects in Cigu, to retroactively be included in a plan by the Ministry of Economic Affairs “to generate 6.5 gigawatts of energy by solar photovoltaic panels by 2020,” the filing said.
Prosecutors alleged that Chen illegitimately favored the Ysolar projects by removing the original application papers, and replacing them with retroactively dated papers, to enable the projects to be included in the ministry’s 2020 target for solar energy production and to help bypass the “plots of land under two hectares” restriction on land-use.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its