The Control Yuan yesterday voted to impeach Lin Sheng-lin (林聖霖), a former prosecutor with the Taitung District Prosecutors Office, for various irregularities that harmed the image of prosecutors, Control Yuan member Chao Chang-ping (趙昌平) said yesterday.
Chao said that Control Yuan members unanimously passed the impeachment motion, rendering the severest punishment to the misbehaving prosecutor.
EXTORTION
Lin was indicted by prosecutors last month on corruption charges. He was accused of extorting money from suspects and leaking information on investigations.
The Control Yuan said that investigations showed that Lin had offered not to indict suspects in return for money in two cases, took advantage of his official position to search telephone call records for his friends and charged plaintiffs fees for helping them write civil and criminal lawsuit petitions.
The Control Yuan found that Lin and his friend Wu Tung-sheng (吳東昇) reached out to people in need of legal consultation by setting up a legal aid foundation in the name of providing legal services.
VIOLATIONS
These irregularities constituted violations of the Criminal Code (刑法), the Civil Servants Work Act (公務員服務法) and the Act for Punishment of Corruption (貪汙治罪條例), Chao said.
The Control Yuan has impeached four judges and nine prosecutors in 11 cases since the watchdog started work last August after being dormant for more than three years.
Chao said the Control Yuan would forward the case to the Judicial Yuan’s Committee on the Discipline of Public Functionaries and hoped the committee would deal with the case immediately.
REASSIGNMENT
Lin was reassigned from the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office in Taipei to the Taitung District Prosecutors’ Office in August last year because he had too many unresolved cases.
He was then placed under surveillance by the office’s ethics office after noting that he had either let cases pile up or dismissed many of them.
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