Prosecutors detained a former Taiwan High Court judge early yesterday on suspicion of taking a bribe from a defendant in a criminal case in 2005.
Fang A-sheng (房阿生), who retired from the High Court later that year and now works as a lawyer, was taken into custody after a panel of three Taipei District Court judges approved a prosecutors’ request.
He was the latest former or incumbent High Court judge to be detained for alleged corruption in the last two months.
A spokesman for the court said there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Fang took a bribe from Chang Ping-lung (張炳龍), a judge at the High Court’s Hualien branch, to help clear Chang in a corruption trial.
The spokesman said the court approved the request based on transcripts of tapped telephone conversations and testimony given by other witnesses in the case.
Chang, who had been charged with taking NT$300,000 (US$9,400) from a plaintiff in a criminal case after promising to deliver a guilty verdict, was found guilty in all previous trials before his case was assigned for a fourth retrial.
Although a panel of three judges including Fang cleared him of the charge, he was sentenced to 11 years in prison at a fifth retrial. However, Chang fled to China before serving the jail term.
According to prosecutors, Fang and another judge on the panel, Tsai Kuang-chih (蔡光治), asked Chang for NT$2 million and NT$500,000, respectively, to find him not guilty.
Huang Lai Jui-chen (黃賴瑞珍), who is allegedly Tsai’s mistress, has confessed to prosecutors that she received the money from Chang’s wife and gave it to Tsai and Fang.
Both Huang and Tsai were detained on July 14 over another corruption case involving an overturned ruling in May.
Prosecutors asked the court to detain Fang, saying that he is a flight risk and could give false testimony in collusion with Chang, who allegedly maintains contact with friends in Taiwan from his base in China.
Fang’s detention is the result of a wide-reaching probe into several high-profile criminal cases in which previous guilty verdicts were reversed abruptly.
The investigation has already led to the detention of three other High Court judges, including Tsai, and a prosecutor from the Banciao District Prosecutors’ Office.
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