The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Monday indicted former Eastern Multimedia Group chairman Gary Wang (王令麟) for allegedly bribing prison officials to get perks while serving a sentence for embezzlement in Taipei Prison.
Twenty-two others, including former Taipei Prison official Su Ching-chun (蘇清俊), were also indicted in the biggest corruption case against prison officials in the nation’s history.
Prosecutors said that Wang has received special treatment since he began serving a sentence of five years and six months for his involvement in several embezzlement scandals on Nov. 1, 2013, and asked the court to impose a heavy sentence.
They alleged that Wang instructed his personal secretary, Hu Hsiao-ching (胡曉菁), to present gifts to prison officials to get favorable treatment.
The gifts given to Su included tea, fruit and scallop sauce, as well as a stay in the presidential suite of a luxurious hot spring resort costing NT$180,000 (US$5,633) a night for him and his wife.
Prosecutors said when Wang was having difficulties adjusting to prison life, Su offered him a library management room once used by former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to serve as his makeshift office.
That allowed Wang to conduct business while serving his sentence, and the prison increased the amount of contact he was allowed with the outside world so that office documents could be delivered to him for his approval.
“Prison officials abused their power for their own benefit. They have reneged on the trust put in them by the public,” deputy chief Prosecutor Chang Chieh-chin (張介欽) said.
Among the other officials receiving bribes were Taipei Prison management section chief Chou Ping-jung (周秉榮), Taichung Prison deputy warden Chao Chung-chih (趙崇智) and Yilan Prison warden Wu Tsai-wei (吳載威).
Prosecutors allege that Chou, his wife and two daughters had NT$193,000 worth of cosmetic surgery done that was paid for by one of the prison’s inmates.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
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