Former Presidential Office press relations director Tsai Chung-li (蔡仲禮) was sentenced to 10 months in prison and put on probation for three years yesterday after the Taipei District Court found him guilty of forgery.
The prison sentence can be commuted to a fine.
The court ruled that Tsai could appeal to the Taiwan High Court.
The ruling said Tsai bought a house in the US state of Maryland in October 2005 while serving as director-general of the Information Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) in Washington.
TECRO staffers without a house are entitled to housing subsidies of US$2,464 per month. The figure is reduced to US$869 for those with a home.
Tsai continued to collect the full subsidy after buying the house.
Admitting his guilt during the district court’s hearing, Tsai said: “I feel ashamed for what I have done.”
He resigned from his post at the Presidential Office last October after Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators revealed details of the scandal to the public.
Tsai was director-general of the TECRO’s Information Division in the US until President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) invited him to serve as Presidential Office press relations director in July 2008.
In other news, Taipei prosecutors yesterday said they were investigating a case in which National Property Bureau (NPB) officials are alleged to have sold a plot of prime public land to construction companies at a price well below its market value and then pocketed some of the proceeds.
Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office spokesman Wang Wen-te (王文德) said prosecutors suspected the land, more than 200m² that originally housed dormitories belonging to state-owned Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp on Bade Road, Taipei City, was sold to construction companies for around NT$100 million (US$3 million), far less than its estimated NT$500 million value.
He alleged that bureau officials may have helped the construction firms make illegal profits of about NT$400 million.
Prosecutors yesterday led agents from the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau to search the offices of three construction firms — Duen Nien Construction Corp (敦年建設公司), Jeou Nien Construction Corp (久年營造公司) and Yuan tai Corp (遠泰建設公司) — and seize documents.
Prosecutors were still interviewing staffers from the three companies as of press time.
Taipei prosecutors indicted former NPB Deputy Director Chen Kuan-pao (陳官保) and his predecessor, Su Wei-cheng (蘇維成), on graft and forgery charges involving the sale of a plot of public land near the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in 2007. The case is pending in the Taipei District Court.
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