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Prosecutors probe construction-waste scandal allegations

Led by Prosecutor Hou Kuan-jen (侯寬仁), the Black Gold Investi-gation Center (查緝黑金行動中心) of the Taiwan High Court Prosecu-tors' Office yesterday morning summoned for questioning more than 50 people who are allegedly involved in a construction-waste scandal.

Prosecutors are also continuing their investigation into the companies Hsien Yu (現有) and Huai Ting (懷鼎), which run sites handling construction waste, to collect evidence of their alleged unlawful acts, according to the local Chinese-language media yesterday.

Among the suspects are Shen Tsung-lung (沈宗隆), chief of Tuku (土庫) Township in Yunlin County and former Yunlin County councilor, and his wife Shen Lee Yu-lun (沈李于綸), who together own Huai Ting.

The couple allegedly cooperated with another suspect, Wu Tsan-lou (吳讚樓), who is in charge of Hsien Yu, in selling certificates to contractors to show that construction waste -- the earth left over from construction projects -- had been dumped in legal sites.

The contractors were then able to use the certificates to apply for operating licenses from the authorities.

Investigators found that around 10 million cubic meters of earth produced by more than 30 public construction projects all over Taiwan since 2000 -- including the Wanhua-Panchiao line of the MRT and Taipei's Yungping Community (永平新村) public housing project -- was not sent to waste sites, but may have been dumped in riverbeds and on mountain slopes, posing a grave threat to the nation's ecology.

The Yunlin District Prosecutors' Office has applied to detain the Shens and Wu, accusing them of corruption and forging documents.

The Black Gold Investigation Center applied for 27 search warrants from the Yunlin District Court on Tuesday and more than 100 investigators conducted seizure operations in Yunlin, Taichung, Taipei and Taoyuan.

The Chinese-language media cited anonymous sources as saying that when investigators arrived at one of the dump sites, they found it was overgrown with weeds and no construction waste was in sight.

Investigators said the two companies allegedly sold dumping certificates to contractors, who then dumped the waste elsewhere.

The cost of a dumping certificate depends on the scale of the construction project. A certificate could be sold for around NT$2 million for a project worth several hundred million NT dollars, the media reports said.
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