The deputy head of the Ministry of Finance's National Property Bureau, Chen Kuan-pao (陳官保), and several other officials were questioned by prosecutors yesterday over allegedly illegal transactions involving a piece of bureau land.
Prosecutors from the Taipei District Public Prosecutor's Office searched 17 locations and questioned Chen, former bureau deputy head Su Wei-cheng (
Also questioned were the owner of the Jun He Construction Company, Lee Lien-shun (
Prosecutors said the officials illegally rented a 661m2 plot of land to the Jun He Construction Company between 2004 and 2005.
The company, which then bought the land, sold it to Liu Te Construction Company, which was planning to build expensive housing at the site.
The land is located near the intersection of Hangzhou S Road Sec 2 and Chaozhou Street.
Current land prices value the plot at around NT$400 million (US$12.35 million), but the Liu Te Construction Company acquired it for only NT$100 million, prosecutors said.
The land was initially used for a public dormitory, but this was abandoned when it was rented out.
The deal was illegal because the officials had rented it without a public tender, the prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said they learned from informants that there might be irregularities in the transaction and discovered evidence in this regard after investigating.
Prosecutor Chen Shu-yun (陳淑雲) instructed 40 agents to search the offices of the bureau, the Jun He Construction Company and the homes of the suspects in search of documentation.
It was not clear if or how the officials had profited from the deal, prosecutors said.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
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