Vice Minister of the Interior Yen Wan-chin (
The former director of the Yangmingshan National Park Service Center, Tsai By-lu (
"Yen behaved suspiciously during the investigation. He might destroy or falsify evidence, or confer with the other defendants if he was able to communicate with them, so the Taipei District Court approved the prosecutors' application to take Yen into custody," Taipei District Court spokesman Liu Shou-sung (劉壽嵩) said yesterday.
PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
Yen is the highest level political appointee in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government to be investigated for corruption.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) accepted his resignation yesterday.
Yen had previously served as deputy DPP secretary-general and the director of the party's Chinese affairs department.
DPP Chairman Yu Shyi-kun said yesterday that the party would soon launch its own investigation into Yen's activities. If it is proven that Yen was involved in bribery, the party will expel him, Yu said.
Yen is a member of the New Tide faction and leader William Lai (
The investigation into Yen centers around the plan to construct a cable car system connecting Beitou with Yangmingshan National Park.
Last December the Rich Development Corp, a construction firm, won a build-operate-transfer bid to construct the cable car system. It proposed building four cable car stations, and the Yangmingshan National Park Service Center granted the firm permits for construction in March. The company began construction work in May.
Soon after the permits had been awarded, however, Taipei prosecutors received complaints alleging that the permits had been awarded illegally and alleging bribery.
Prosecutors said their investigation led them to suspect that Yen knew that the company failed to qualify for the construction permit and needed to improve its proposal and that he asked Tsai to grant the permits anyway.
Prosecutors said they had monitored Rich Development's telephone calls and heard people talk about bribery.
Prosecutors said they had also found it suspicious that Tsai approved permits for a total of 183 hot spring hotels and restaurants to be built around the cable car stations just a few days before he retired from his park job last month.
The permits were granted without environmental impact assessments being conducted, which was illegal, prosecutors said.
On Wednesday prosecutors led a search of 26 locations for evidence, including Yen's office and the Yangmingshan National Park Service Center.
Meanwhile, the Taipei City Government yesterday denied any involvement in the corruption scandal and said that it had followed all regulations in planning and executing the project.
Lee Shu-chuan (李四川), director of the Bureau of Public Works' new construction department, said the original cable car project, which was approved by the Executive Yuan in 1995, included the construction of a cable car system from Qinshui Park (親水公園) in Xinbeitou to Yangmingshan National Park, cable car stations and stores, but did not include the construction of hot spring hotels.
He said the interior ministry had added a training dormitory and hot springs hotel to the project when it issued a bulletin announcing approval of the project, thereby allowing contractors to develop those two kinds of buildings in the area.
"It's the ministry's responsibility to ask the Environmental Protection Administration about the construction of those buildings since it added the two items," Lee said.
While the city government is the supervising agency for the entire project, it actually has little authority because 90 percent of the construction sites are within the national park area, Lee said, putting them under the authority of the Yangmingshan National Park Administration.
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) stood by his officials yesterday, saying that the scandal had nothing to do with the city government.
The cable-car project was scheduled to be completed next June, but city officials said the corruption probe might delay that timetable.
Additional reporting by Jewel Huang and Jean Lin
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
SENATE RECOMMENDATION: The National Defense Authorization Act encourages the US secretary of defense to invite Taiwan’s navy to participate in the exercises in Hawaii The US Senate on Thursday last week passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2026, which strongly encourages the US secretary of defense to invite Taiwan’s naval forces to participate in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise, as well as allocating military aid of US$1 billion for Taiwan. The bill, which authorizes appropriations for the military activities of the US Department of Defense, military construction and other purposes, passed with 77 votes in support and 20 against. While the NDAA authorizes about US$925 billion of defense spending, the Central News Agency yesterday reported that an aide of US
NINE-IN-ONE ELECTIONS: Prosecutors’ offices recorded 115 cases of alleged foreign interference in the presidential election campaign from August 2023 to Dec. 13 last year The National Security Bureau (NSB) yesterday said that it has begun planning early to counter Chinese interference in next year’s nine-in-one elections as its intelligence shows that Beijing might intensify its tactics, while warning of continued efforts to infiltrate the government and military. The bureau submitted a report to the Legislative Yuan ahead of a meeting today of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. “We will research situations in different localities and keep track of abnormalities to ensure that next year’s elections proceed without disruption,” the bureau said. Although the project is generally launched during election years, reports of alleged Chinese interference
RSS