Chiayi County Commissioner Helen Chang (張花冠) and her predecessor, Chen Ming-wen (陳明文), were released on bail early yesterday after being questioned overnight by prosecutors on corruption allegations linked to a herbal medicine biotech park project.
Chang was released on NT$3 million (US$100,000) bail and Chen on NT$1 million bail.
The two, both members of the Democratic Progressive Party, are suspected of having taken bribes from Chun Lung Development Co (春龍開發公司) during the bidding process for the Dapumei (大埔美) Intelligent Industrial Park at the Dapumei Herbs Park, which was a build-operate-transfer (BOT) project, between 2004 and 2006 in exchange for helping the developer win the tender.
Chen was the county chief who promoted the project, while Chang was a lawmaker when the bidding on the park was initiated.
Defending her innocence upon her release, Chang criticized the investigation conducted by the prosecutors as “very unfair” and described the search of Chiayi County Government offices a day earlier as “unprecedented” and “disorganized.”
The prosecutors mobilized more than 400 agents for the search of the county government on Tuesday.
She said the integrity of her administrative team would withstand scrutiny, as evidenced by the fact that all 25 county government employees summoned by prosecutors were eventually freed.
Meanwhile, Chen said he “has never taken a single penny” in the case and said the incident was a “mistake.”
A preliminary investigation found that the government and the private sector were each to provide NT$1.5 billion in funding for the project under the BOT model.
The Chiayi County Government, however, revoked its contract with the developer in July 2009 after it failed to complete the construction work on time.
In February last year, the county government decided to change the herbal medicine biotech park project into a precision-machinery industry park.
Investigators and prosecutors raided 51 locations and summoned more than 40 people for questioning on Tuesday. The Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday applied for the detention of 13 people, including Chang’s sister, Chang Ying-chi (張瑛姬), county government general affairs section official Chiu Feng-ming (邱豐銘), as well as several professors and business owners, for suspected involvement in the Chiayi County bid.
In response to news that applications had gone out for the detention of her sister, Helen Chang said that no matter who was detained and whatever their background, she believed in their innocence.
Helen Chang said the prosecutors’ office was looking into an old case, adding that the case stemmed from the time when she was still a legislator, not a county commissioner.
“We hope there is still justice in the judicial system and hope that the prosecutors will be able to clear things up,” Helen Chang said, adding that she was not at liberty to comment further as the investigations were still ongoing. “The people are watching.”
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS