Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Kaohsiung City councilor Huang Shao-ting (黃紹庭) was indicted on fraud charges on Friday for holding US citizenship during his council term.
Kaohsiung prosecutors said Huang was sworn in as a Kaohsiung City Councilor in December 2006, and ended his term in September last year. During his time as a councilor, he received a total of NT$14 million (US$432,000) in salary, research fees, assistant fees and other subsidies and thereby committed fraud, prosecutors said.
Huang said he would only comment after receiving a copy of the indictment.
According to the prosecutors, Huang obtained a master’s degree from a US university in 1995 after, which he lived and worked there. Receiving a green card after five years, he became a US citizen on Jan. 26, 2006.
In October 2006, Huang returned to Kaohsiung, took part in elections for Kaohsiung City council and was elected to the city council.
Prosecutors accused Huang of concealing his US citizenship on assuming the post of city councilor and of not canceling it until June last year.
The Nationality Act (國籍法) bans government officials from holding foreign citizenship and requires those who do to renounce it before assuming office.
In related news, prosecutors said they were still investigating whether former Kaohsiung city councilor Yang Se-yu (楊色玉) of the People First Party held dual citizenship when in office. Yang has been overseas since February and asked her family to resign her post on her behalf. Kaohsiung prosecutors said they launched an investigation after receiving a complaint alleging that Yang holds Canadian citizenship.
In February, the Taipei District Court found former KMT legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) guilty of fraud and forgery for holding US citizenship while serving as an elected official, sentencing her to two years in prison. Lee is appealing the case.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods