Taiwan Water Co chairman Hsu Hsiang-kun (
Kaohsiung District Court ordered their detention following a request by the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors' Office.
Hsu is suspected of taking millions of dollars in kickbacks from contractors of major construction projects over the past two years via his special adviser Chen Tzu-kuo (陳茲國) and You Yii-der (游以德), an associate professor in the Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering at National Taiwan University, who serves as the chairman of a local environmental protection foundation, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said they started investigating the case after receiving tip offs last year.
They said they had discovered Hsu asked for kickbacks from bidders with the help of Chen and You. He also forced subordinates at the company to collude with him, the prosecutors said.
Chen and You, the company's chief engineer Lin Lien-mao (
The court denied the prosecutors' request to detain the environmental protection foundation's secretary Sun Ling-ling (孫玲玲) and accountant Kuo Hsiu-mei (郭秀美).
According to prosecutors, when contractors bid for a construction project, Hsu often charged them an additional "registration fee," of about 10 to 20 percent of the total budget for each construction project. Prosecutors said that Hsu and his associates had made more than NT$10 million (US$300,000) in this way.
When they searched Hsu's office early on Thursday, they found NT$1.5 million in cash, as well as US$60,000 and gold jewelry.
Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) said yesterday that Hsu would be suspended from both the chairmanship and his post as a Cabinet adviser, in keeping with the provisions of the Civil Servant Services Act (公務員服務法).
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
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