Taipei prosecutors detained a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilor, city staff members and road maintenance contractors on charges of corruption and bribery yesterday.
Prosecutors from the Taipei Public Prosecutors Office searched the office of DPP Councilor Hsu Fu-nan (許富男) and officials at the city's Public Works Department's maintenance office on Tuesday morning. After questioning Hsu, officials and a contractor, prosecutors said they had evidence that they had been involved in illegal profiteering from road paving projects in Taipei from 2002 to last year.
Prosecutors allege that the contractor won the project with the assistance of Hsu and officials at the maintenance office. The councilor and officials were allegedly won over with overseas tours.
Hsu, the officials and the contractor allegedly profited by using recycled tar in road work projects.
According to the department, the city's annual budget for road paving projects is about NT$300 million (US$9 million), with about NT$200 million allocated for the purchase of new tar and the remaining NT$100 million for recycled tar.
As the price of new tar is double that of recycled tar, the accused are alleged to have purchased recycled tar only for projects, pocketing the price difference.
The works department yesterday decided to take disciplinary action against staff members involved in the case. The superintendent, as well as deputy engineers and engineers, are to be transferred to other positions. The maintenance office director and roadway team leader have received warnings for failing to properly oversee the situation, and the three technicians directly involved in the case will be fired.
Department Commissioner Chuang Wu-hsiung (
"But we won't cover up for anyone's mistakes. In addition to taking disciplinary action against people who are involved, we will inspect all of the city's roads and see if the paving meets the department's requirement," he said yesterday during a press conference at city hall.
The department stipulates that tar for full-scale road paving work should be 5cm thick. For tarring work done to repair rough and uneven roads, the tar should be 20cm thick.
Chuang also dismissed accusations that the city government had failed to deal with the crisis immediately, saying he reported the news to Deputy Mayor Yeh Chin-chuan (
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
The Taipei District Court yesterday ordered the detention of the Taipei City councilor Hsu, four officials from city government's Public Works Department and two road maintenance contractors on charges of corruption and bribery.
"Because the suspects allegedly committed bribery, a serious crime, and because they may conspire regarding their statements [to prosecutors] if they are able to see one another, the court has decided to detain them," Liu Shou-sung (劉壽嵩), a spokesman for the Taipei District Court, said yesterday.
Taipei District Prosecutors' Office spokesman Lin Pang-liang (
Hsu is suspected of acting as a broker between the officials and the contractors, Lin added.
Lin said the contractors were also suspected of bribing officials who inspected the tarring work, which would have failed to meet the city's requirements.
Investigators have already inspected a couple of finished road maintenance projects and found them to be substandard, Lin said.
Additional reporting by Rich Chang
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the