The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday accused Lwo Shih-hsiung (羅世雄), chief executive of the Executive Yuan’s Southern Taiwan Joint Service Center, of illegal land use, tax evasion and false declaration of assets.
In a surprise twist, however, the Executive Yuan said that Lwo had resigned from his post last week.
DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said a building built on agricultural land in Guanmiao Township (關廟) registered under the name of Lwo’s wife, Lu Chi-hsiu (呂綺修), was yesterday declared illegal by the Greater Tainan Government.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The allegation was seen as a DPP “counter attack” against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) after KMT Legislator Chiu Yi’s (邱毅) series of attacks against DPP vice presidential candidate Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) and his family. Chiu had accused Su of illegally constructing a farmhouse and made other allegations of misconduct in the past month.
Su announced on Tuesday that he would donate his farmland and the farmhouse on which it stands to a township office to end months of controversy over the assets.
Lin said Lu had neither applied for a construction license or an occupancy license for the 500 ping (1,653m2) structure nor declared rental income from leasing out the building on Lwo’s annual assets declaration, a requirement for all government officials.
“Now that Su has donated his farmhouse, which has been declared legal, shouldn’t Lo’s illegal structure be demolished immediately?” he asked.
He added that Lwo, a public servant and a KMT legislative candidate in Greater Kaohsiung, should resign from his post.
The DPP has in the past week also disclosed several suspected cases of illegal land use and construction against KMT members, including Greater Kaohsiung Council Speaker Hsu Kun-yuan (許崑源), KMT Legislator Nancy Chao (趙麗雲) and presidential adviser Lin Yuan-lang (林源朗).
In response, the Executive Yuan yesterday said Lwo had resigned on Tuesday last week.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) approved Lwo’s resignation on Thursday last week, it said, adding that it was up to Lwo to explain the matter himself.
In a statement yesterday, Lwo dismissed the allegations as a “campaign tactic and said he would explain why he resigned at a press conference today.
Lu, meanwhile, said Lwo “had nothing to do with the plot of land,” which she said she has owned since she was 21 — long before she married Lwo when she was 32.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Credit departments of farmers’ and fishers’ associations blocked a total of more than NT$180 million (US$6.01 million) from being lost to scams last year, National Police Agency (NPA) data showed. The Agricultural Finance Agency (AFA) said last week that staff of farmers’ and fishers’ associations’ credit departments are required to implement fraud prevention measures when they serve clients at the counter. They would ask clients about personal financial management activities whenever they suspect there might be a fraud situation, and would immediately report the incident to local authorities, which would send police officers to the site to help, it said. NPA data showed
ENERGY RESILIENCE: Although Alaska is open for investments, Taiwan is sourcing its gas from the Middle East, and the sea routes carry risks, Ho Cheng-hui said US government officials’ high-profile reception of a Taiwanese representative at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference indicated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific energy resilience alliance, an academic said. Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) attended the conference in Alaska on Thursday last week at the invitation of the US government. Pan visited oil and gas facilities with senior US officials, including US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and US Senator Daniel Sullivan. Pan attending the conference on behalf of President William Lai (賴清德) shows a significant elevation in diplomatic representation,
The Taipei City Reserve Command yesterday initiated its first-ever 14-day recall of some of the city’s civilian service reservists, who are to undergo additional training on top of refresher courses. The command said that it rented sites in Neihu District (內湖), including the Taipei Tennis Center, for the duration of the camp to optimize tactical positioning and accommodate the size of the battalion of reservists. A battalion is made up of four companies of more than 200 reservists each, it said. Aside from shooting drills at a range in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), the remainder of the training would be at
RSS