Farglory Construction is to be fined NT$12.4 million (US$397,000) for violating various rules governing the construction of Taipei Dome (台北大巨蛋), the Taipei City Government said yesterday.
The city government said the company had failed to complete the construction within the contracted period and failed to obtain the permit to use the land on which the construction is being built as stipulated in clause 1 of article 7.1.1 of the contract.
The company had also failed to produce documentation of its professional construction insurance within the allotted time, the city government’s Department of Sports said.
The Department of Environmental Protection has put a freeze on Farglory’s attempts to initiate second-phase negotiations as of Feb. 17 and placed a NT$50,000 daily fine on the company up to a maximum of NT$3 million for the company’s lapse in conforming to regulations, despite being warned twice by the city government, officials said.
To date, the company has been fined NT$2.9 million over 58 days, but the company has asked for arbitration over the matter and the city government is awaiting the Taipei District Court’s response, the department said.
The company was also accused of violating the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法) and other environment-related regulations.
It is being fined NT$900,000 for not specifying details about soil properties at the site and has already paid NT$4.65 million in fines for not providing insurance details on time, the Department of Environmental Protection said.
The department has fined Farglory NT$4.67 million, including N$3.1 million for six violations of the act since construction of the Taipei Dome began and an additional NT$1.57 million for 82 infractions of regulations on air and water pollution as well as waste disposal.
Apart from the NT$1.5 million fine announced on March 31, the company has paid all other fines, the department said.
The company owes the city government’s Construction Management Office NT$81,000 for violating regulations and has already paid the Public Works Department NT$180,000 for damaging a bombax ceiba tree during relocation.
Farglory is also involved in an ongoing case against the city government’s Department of Cultural Affairs, which has accused the company of violating item 1 of clause 2 of Article 94 of the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保護法), while the firm also faces criminal charges for allegedly damaging the former Songshan Tobacco Plant, a city-designated heritage site.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift