Tainan Mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財), a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member, was indicted yesterday by prosecutors for his alleged involvement in a construction scandal. The prosecutors requested a 12-year prison sentence.
"Hsu has been charged with corruption and violations of the Government Procurement Act (政府採購法)," Tainan District Prosecutors' Office spokeswoman Kuo Chen-ni (郭珍妮) told a press conference.
Kuo said Hsu was in charge of a construction bid for a Tainan business center parking lot.
Sun-Yu Construction Co (尚禹營造公司) won the contract with a bid of around NT$190 million (US$5.7 million). The Government Procurement Act only allows for an increase of 50 percent to the successful tender price, or about NT$95 million, but Hsu gave the construction company an additional NT$220 million to complete the work, Kuo said.
Hsu violated the law by favoring the company's bid and authorizing the payment, Kuo added.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Tainan City Councilor Hsieh Long-chieh (謝龍介) broke the scandal last May during a council meeting and then handed details of the case to the Tainan District Prosecutors' Office, accusing Hsu and officials of Sun-Yu Construction of corruption.
Then, last October, prosecutors raided the Tainan City Government building and Sun-Yu offices.
Three Tainan government officials and six officials from Sun-Yu were also indicted yesterday on charges of corruption.
Hsu told reporters that he was innocent. He said the construction project was delayed for years before he took office, so he personally took charge of the case in the hope the project would be completed as soon as possible.
He said the project was clean.
Tainan prosecutors last month decided against indicting Hsu following an investigation into his usage of his mayoral special allowance, with Hsu at the time thanking prosecutors for clearing his name.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never