The Tainan District Court yesterday ruled that six people must be held incommunicado for their alleged involvement in a series of governmental land requisition scandals.
The alleged mastermind, Tainan City Council Speaker Huang Yu-wen (黃郁文), has been missing since Monday when prosecutors were to have had him subpoenaed.
Prosecutors suspect that the speaker bought land that was to be requisitioned by the Tainan City Government and manipulated the city council to pass the requisition budgets so he could receive compensation from the government.
"As far as we have figured out, approximately NT$160 million in suspicious money has entered the bank accounts of Huang and his relatives," said Chang Pei-jane (
The six who were ordered to be detained were Huang's wife, Chang Su-chen (
After lengthy questioning on Monday, the prosecutors recommended to the court that the seven suspects be detained. But the court released city council consultant Liu Han-chih (
The scam is alleged to have involved two land requisition budgets passed by the city council in 1998 and 1999. The first amounted to roughly NT$54.57 million and the second around NT$203.37 million, according to the prosecutors.
The city government took nearly 19 plots of land for the purpose of road construction.
"The road is very long but the plots of land requisitioned were almost all owned by people related to the speaker, which is suspicious," Chang said.
Prosecutors said the speaker's wife and Liu bought the land after or during the time when the council passed the compensation budgets, in anticipation of the government's requisition and consequent compensation.
The prosecutors said, however, that they suspect Chang and Liu were only "nominal" buyers and that the speaker was the mastermind, as, they said, the circulation of money indicated.
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