The Taiwan High Court yesterday overturned a district court’s decision to release Farglory Land Development Co (遠雄建設) chairman Chao Teng-hsiung (趙藤雄) on bail, and ordered a new bail hearing to decide on whether to detain Chao in the investigation of allegations that he bribed a Taoyuan County official in connection with a development project.
The judges summoned Chao and Farglory manager Wei Chun-hsiung (魏春雄) to attend a hearing at 8:30pm and the hearing was still on going as press time last night.
The hearing followed the High Court’s decision earlier yesterday which, in response to an appeal filed by prosecutors, sent the matter back to the Taipei District Court, saying the lower court’s decision on Saturday to release Chao and Wei on bail was not well-grounded.
The high court said that the sum of NT$5 million (US$166,400) set as bail for Chao and NT$1 million for Wei were not enough to prevent them from fleeing the country.
The high court added that Chao called a meeting to discuss the matter with his executives after being released on bail on Saturday, suggesting that they might have an intention to conspire to pervert the course of justice.
Chao is being investigated on allegations of paying a bribe of NT$16 million, via an intermediary, Tsai Jen-hui (蔡仁惠), a retired professor, to then-Taoyuan County deputy commissioner Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文) to win a local government building contract.
Yeh previously served as director-general of the Construction and Planning Agency (CPA)
In the investigation, Tsai and Yeh — who was dismissed from his position as Taoyuan county deputy commissioner after prosecutors on Friday raided his office and residence as part of an investigation into the possible corruption — were both taken into custody on Saturday.
In the Friday morning raids, investigators seized NT$17 million in cash from Yeh’s home in Taipei and about NT$1.12 million in cash from his office in the county government.
Tsai allegedly picked up the money from a Farglory office in Taipei under instruction from Chao and Wei, investigators said.
Farglory secured the affordable housing project in Bade (八德) with a bid of NT$1.3 billion and on May 8 signed a contract with the county government.
Prosecutors said that they are investigating another case of suspected corruption allegedly involving Yeh.
Investigators said that during questioning, Tsai accused Chao of bribing Yeh to obtain another government housing project in New Taipei City’s Linkou (林口) in 2012, when Yeh was director-general of the Ministry of the Interior’s CPA.
Meanwhile, in response to the alleged bribery case, Minister of the Interior Chen Wen-jen (陳威人) said yesterday that the ministry would launch a probe into development projects handled by Yeh during his term as the head of the CPA.
“During Yeh’s term as the CPA’s director-general, he has handled several projects, including the construction of social housing complexes in Fujhou (浮洲) region and in Banciao (板橋) and Linkou districts in New Taipei City,” Chen said. “I have ordered a probe into those projects and will not hesitate to refer the case to the judiciary if anything illegal is discovered.”
Amber Shyu (徐玉紅), a resident of the Linkou project site who has been resisting forced eviction for nearly a decade, said she hopes investigators will work independently to dig out unlawful conduct involved in the project, so that the people can live happily and peacefully in their homes.
“If there are no greedy officials, corporations will not be able to do anything they want using money, and there would not be so many innocent people forced out of their homes and villages wiped out from the map,” she said.
Additional reporting by CNA
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS