The Taipei District Court yesterday ordered Farglory Land Development Co (遠雄建設) chairman Chao Teng-hsiung (趙藤雄) to be detained after the Taiwan High Court on Sunday overturned the district court’s decision to release Chao on NT$5 million (US$166,400) bail in an investigation over allegations that he bribed a local government official in connection with a development project in Taoyuan County.
The district court held a hearing at 8:30pm on Sunday to decide on whether to detain Chao and Farglory manager Wei Chun-hsiung (魏春雄).
The hearing proceeded for four hours and at 12:45am yesterday, the district court judges ruled that Chao and Wei be detained.
Photo: CNA
Chao’s attorneys yesterday filed an appeal against Chao’s detention with the Taiwan High Court.
The district court yesterday said Chao and Wei, both holding top positions in the company, have significant influence on the company’s workers and it could be easy for them to conspire with the company’s staff or destroy evidence.
After Chao was released on bail on Saturday, he called a meeting to discuss the matter with company executives, and ordered staff involved in the case back to the headquarters to discuss the matter with him, suggesting that they might have an intention to conspire to pervert the course of justice, prosecutors said.
The Taipei District Court said Chao and Wei changed their previous statements and made accordant statements in Sunday’s hearing, suggesting that they might have met to discuss their statements.
The district court added that prosecutors during the hearing said that investigators had intercepted a large number of documents the company allegedly attempted to destroy that were transferred to a waste paper treatment factory in Taoyuan County.
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.
Both Tsai and Yeh were taken into custody on Saturday.
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 they are investigating another case of suspected corruption allegedly involving Yeh.
According to the prosecutors, Tsai has also 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 Construction and Planning Agency.
The subsidiary of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) in Kumamoto, Japan, turned a profit in the first quarter of this year, marking the first time the first fab of the unit has become profitable since mass production started at the end of 2024. According to the contract chipmaker’s financial statement released on Friday, Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Inc (JASM), a joint venture running the fab in Kumamoto, posted NT$951 million (US$30.19 million) in profit in the January-to-March period, compared with a loss of NT$1.39 billion in the previous quarter, and a loss of NT$3.25 billion in the first quarter of
DRONE CENTRAL: Taiwan aims to become Asia’s democratic hub for drones, with most exports focused on high-quality military-grade models, an official said Taiwan’s drone industry is expected to expand significantly by 2030, producing 100,000 units per month and exporting half of them, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Current drone production capacity is about 15,000 units per month, but the industry can quickly scale up as demand increases, Industrial Development Administration Director-General Chiou Chyou-huey (邱求慧) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s drone output grew 2.5-fold last year to NT$12.9 billion (US$408.3 million) under a government program to develop the uncrewed vehicle sector, he said. The Executive Yuan in October last year approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion into domestic production of uncrewed aerial
RESOLUTE BACKING: Two Republican senators are planning to introduce legislation that would impose immediate sanctions on China if it attempts to invade Taiwan US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday reaffirmed US congressional support for Taiwan, saying the US and “all freedom-loving people” have a stake in preventing China from seizing Taiwan by force. Johnson made the remarks in an interview with Fox News Sunday on US President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) last week. In an interview that aired on Friday on Fox News, just as Trump wrapped up a high-stakes visit to China, he said he has yet to green-light a new US$14 billion arms package to Taiwan and that it “depends on China.” “It’s a very good
US President Donald Trump yesterday said he would speak to President William Lai (賴清德) as his administration considers whether to move ahead with a US$14 billion weapons sale to Taiwan — a potential arms deal that has drawn criticism from China. “Well, I’ll speak to him. I speak to everybody,” Trump told reporters yesterday when asked if he had any plans to call his counterpart, although he did not offer a time frame for when such a conversation could take place. Trump previously said he would speak to the person “that’s running Taiwan,” without specifying who he meant. “We have that situation very
RSS