An advisory officer for the Lienchiang County (Matsu) government has been impeached by the Control Yuan for soliciting and accepting bribes, engaging in grant fraud and unilaterally ordering the culling of 83 sika deer.
The official, Liu Te-chuan (劉德全), committed the offenses since 2016 while serving as head of the county’s Industrial Development Division and Public Works Department, the Control Yuan said in a news release on Wednesday.
Liu solicited and received about NT$1 million (US$30,807) in bribes from three companies bidding for county government contracts between 2016 and 2020, it said.
Photo: Yu Chao-fu, Taipei Times
In 2018 and 2019, while serving on a committee awarding industrial innovation grants, Liu knowingly approved five applications for more than NT$3 million in funds that his two sons had filed via shell companies or companies belonging to acquaintances, the Control Yuan said.
In 2020, Liu ordered a company that won an animal control contract from the county government to cull 83 sika deer on Daciou Island (大坵) — an uninhabited former military outpost north of Beigan Island (北竿) — even though the contract made no mention of culling deer and the government had not formulated plans to do so.
The contractor used snares to capture the deer and inhumanely killed them by cutting their throats or stabbing them in their vital organs in contravention of animal welfare laws, the statement said.
The Lienchiang District Court last year found Liu guilty on five charges, including accepting bribes and breach of trust by a public official, and sentenced him to nine years and 10 months in prison, the Control Yuan said.
The Lienchiang County Government on Wednesday said it “respected” the ruling, and would await a subsequent judgement from the Disciplinary Court for civil servants, to which Liu’s case has been referred.
The Disciplinary Court could impose a range of administrative penalties on Liu, including demotion, revocation of his status as a civil servant, a fine, or a reduction or cancelation of his pension.
SEND A MESSAGE: Sinking the amphibious assault ship, the lead warship of its class, is meant to show China the US Navy is capable of sinking their ships, an analyst said The US and allied navies plan to sink a 40,000-tonne ship at the latest Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise to simulate defeating a Chinese amphibious assault on Taiwan. This year’s RIMPAC — the 29th iteration of the world’s largest naval exercise — involves the US, 28 partners, more than 25,000 personnel, 40 warships, three submarines and more than 150 aircraft operating in and around Hawaii from yesterday to Aug. 1, the US Navy said in a press release. The major components of the event include multidomain warfare exercises in multiship surface engagements, anti-submarine warfare and multi-axis defense of a carrier strike
Passengers aboard Korean Airlines Flight KE189 arrived in Taichung safely yesterday after a scare the previous day encountering uncontrolled decompression, which injured 13 passengers. Flight KE189 departed from Incheon at 4:45pm on Saturday bound for Taichung with 125 passengers on board. The flight was above Jeju Island when a fault in the pressurization system occurred 50 minutes after takeoff. Online flight tracker Flightradar24’s data show that the plane dropped more than 8,000 meters within 15 minutes, before it returned and landed back at Incheon Airport at 19:38pm. Thirteen passengers on board had a headache or earache due to the incident and were hospitalized. A different
China might seek to isolate Taiwan and weaken its economy through a “quarantine,” which would make it difficult for the US to respond and force Taipei to negotiate on unification, CNN reported on Saturday. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) “increasingly bellicose actions” toward Taiwan have heightened concerns that Beijing would use its military against Taiwan, it said, citing a report by think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). However, China might choose to initiate a quarantine, rather than a military invasion of Taiwan, to avoid US involvement, it said. “A quarantine [is] a law enforcement-led operation to control
A new message broadcast on the Taipei MRT’s Wenhu (Brown) Line urging passengers to yield their seats to those in need, not necessarily elderly people, would be extended to other MRT lines and public transportation in the capital, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday. Chiang was responding to reporters’ questions on the sidelines of a news conference at Taipei City Hall promoting healthy walking. Several disputes over priority seats on public transportation have recently been reported, sparking debate about who qualifies to sit in them, as most of the cases involved elderly people asking young people to give up their