An arrest warrant was issued on Wednesday for former Tainan county council speaker Wu Chien-pao (吳健保) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), who disappeared before he could start to serve his conviction linked to baseball game-fixing scandals that started in the 2006 season.
Wu was supposed to report to the Tainan District Prosecutors Office at 10am on Tuesday to start serving a three-year-and-two-month sentence, but he did not appear.
Judiciary officials said Wu would be put on the wanted list.
His family told police that Wu has not been seen for more than a month and they had not been able to contact him by telephone for the past two weeks.
There are rumors that he has fled to the Philippines.
After being convicted of blackmail, breach of trust and other charges for being one of the masterminds behind game-fixing scandals that tarnished the reputation of the Chinese Professional Baseball League and several players, he — along with 35 baseball players and several gang members — was sentenced on Aug. 13.
Wu and the other principals were found guilty of enticing baseball players to throw games with offers of money, sex with female escorts or threat of violence.
Wu served two terms as Tainan County council speaker from 2002 to 2010, before the county merged with Tainan city to become Greater Tainan.
Wu retains a great deal of political clout in Greater Taiwan, and was working to help his son, Wu Yu-huan (吳禹寰), win a seat on a councilor seat for the upcoming election in November.
Wu reportedly did not want to go to prison because the publicity it would create might hurt his son’s campaign.
The baseball scandal is not the first time Wu has been sentenced to prison.
In May 2011, he was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to three-year-and-a-half years in the first ruling by the Greater Tainan branch of the Taiwan High Court for his role in illegal sand-and-gravel quarrying on the Tseng-wen River (曾文溪).
Wu and 25 others had been indicted in August 2004 on charges of bribing officials, breaking government procurement laws and colluding to steal public assets in connection with a river-dredging contract won by Wu and former Tainan city councilor Lee Chuan-fu (李全富).
Wu was removed as council speaker following the verdict, and unusually, prosecutors sought to have him report to prison just a week later and dispatched police officers to monitor his movements.
However, Wu appealed the ruling — but vowed he had no intention of leaving the country to avoid going to prison.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS