The Taipei District Court ordered a former principal of the Jin-Wen Institute of Technology (景文技術學院) to be held incommunicado yesterday while prosecutors continue to investigate a financial scandal surrounding the school.
Prosecutors suspect that Lin Tsung-sung (林宗嵩) illegally sold land to the school at inflated prices.
Since Thursday, investigators from the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office have been questioning Lin and several other officials from Jin-Wen and the Ministry of Education.
Although Lin was detained yesterday, prosecutors allowed the school's chief accountant to go on bail of NT$30,000.
Others who were questioned were also released.
In all, prosecutors questioned nine officials from Jin-Wen and the education ministry. At the time of this report, investigators were still talking to witnesses.
The Jin-Wen Institute, a member of the Jin-Wen Group, reportedly bought several plots of land at inflated prices from relatives of the group's head, Chang Wan-li (
The artificially high prices allowed Chang to wring money out of the institute, investigators said.
Lin -- a former principal at the school and Chang's son-in-law -- allegedly helped execute the land purchases.
News reports say the properties were sold to Jin-Wen at twice their market value. In addition, at the time of the sale, the land had been pledged as collateral in other transactions.
Though the institute said it intended to use the purchased land to expand its campus, the property was not ultimately used for that purpose.
The expansion project required the approval of the education ministry, and investigators want to know what role the agency played in the project.
Investigators are also suspicious of the circumstances in which Jin-Wen was upgraded from a "polytechnic" school in 1996 to an "institute of technology."
At the time, the school didn't meet the requirements for the upgrade, investigators allege.
Prosecutors and investigators have also been exploring whether education officials have received bribes from Chang.
The school's financial woes came to light last July after Chang bounced tens of millions of dollars in checks.
Several government officials, including former minister without portfolio Chang Yu-hui (
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