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.
PROVOCATIVE: Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Sun Lei accused Japan of sending military vessels to deliberately provoke tensions in the Taiwan Strait China denounced remarks by Japan and the EU about the South China Sea at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, and accused Tokyo of provocative behavior in the Taiwan Strait and planning military expansion. Ayano Kunimitsu, a Japanese vice foreign minister, told the Council meeting on maritime security that Tokyo was seriously concerned about the situation in the East China and South China seas, and reiterated Japan’s opposition to any attempt to change the “status quo” by force, and obstruction of freedom of navigation and overflight. Stavros Lambrinidis, head of the EU delegation to the UN, also highlighted South China Sea
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said it expects its 2-nanometer (2nm) chip capacity to grow at a compound annual rate of 70 percent from this year to 2028. The projection comes as five fabs begin volume production of 2-nanometer chips this year — two in Hsinchu and three in Kaohsiung — TSMC senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Silicon Valley, California, last week. Output in the first year of 2-nanometer production, which began in the fourth quarter of last year, is expected to
Taiwan’s economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter, as booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove a surge in exports, spilling over into investment and consumption, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. GDP growth was 13.69 percent year-on-year during the January-to-March period, beating the DGBAS’ February forecast by 2.23 percentage points and marking the most robust growth in nearly four decades, DGBAS senior official Chiang Hsin-yi (江心怡) told a news conference in Taipei. The result was powered by exports, which remain the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, Chiang said. Outbound shipments jumped 51.12 percent year-on-year to
RSS