Prosecutors have filed an application to freeze the assets of former Taoyuan County deputy commissioner Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文), along with the bank accounts and properties of his girlfriend, Chen Li-ling (陳麗玲), as a probe into corruption allegations continues.
Prosecutors said the move aimed to prevent Yeh and Chen from hiding or transferring their assets — allegedly illegally gained — to other accounts, as well as stopping their families and close associates from money-laundering.
Investigators found that Chen, Yeh’s girlfriend outside his marriage, had provided four personal bank accounts in which Yeh deposited various alleged bribery payments and laundered money.
After checking Yeh’s property declaration, required for public servants, from October last year, prosecutors said that he had listed an outstanding mortgage on one property of NT$16 million (US$533,000).
That amount matched the alleged NT$16 million bribe paid to Yeh by Farglory Land Development Co chairman Chao Teng-hsiung (趙藤雄).
Yeh previously headed up the Ministry of Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency (CPA), which was the central government’s department responsible for the nation’s major construction projects.
Prosecutors said it was widely suspected in political and business circles that when Yeh headed the agency, he and other officials were the recipients of bribes and kickbacks from developers and construction firms.
When Yeh was forced to retire from the CPA in July last year, investigators alleged that with his usual flow of bribe money stemmed, Yeh began demanding large lump sums in bribes from companies with property development projects in his post as Taoyuan County deputy commissioner.
When Yeh was forced to retire as CPA director-general, even though he had an inkling that the anti-corruption agency may be trailing him, he was confident that he had covered his tracks, so he continued to seek bribes from companies in return for project approvals, prosecutors said.
It has been reported that Yeh was appointed deputy to Taoyuan County Commissioner John Wu(吳志揚) to implement and fast-track Wu’s personal pet project — the Taoyuan Aerotropolis project — which has been valued at NT$2.4 trillion to develop 4,771 hectares of land.
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