Most suspects detained for overnight questioning by Taipei prosecutors in a judicial probe of alleged corruption in a Coast Guard Administration shipbuilding contract worth NT$10 billion (US$302.1 million) were released yesterday morning.
Ten of the 11 suspects detained in Thursday’s raids were taken to the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office in Taipei.
Among those released yesterday were Huang Kan-fu (黃淦甫), former deputy director of the administration’s Maritime Patrol Directorate-General; Wu Juei-hsiang (吳瑞祥), who headed the administration’s Supervision and Construction Section; Huang Han-sung (黃漢松), who headed the administration’s Shipping Services Office; and officials from Jong Shyn Shipbuilding Corp.
The judicial probe is being led by Prosecutor Weng Wei-lun (翁偉倫), who heads the “Special Task Force on Black Gold,” a team set up by prosecutors to crack down on corruption, bribery and major economic crimes by government officials, businesses and gangsters.
An official said there is much material to go over from seized cartons of documents, information that could help determine the involvement and roles played by the suspects.
The case centers on helipads aboard two administration patrol ships built by Kaohsiung-based Jong Shyn which have already been commissioned — the Tainan CG126 and the Xinbei CG127 — both of which are 2,000-tonne-class vessels.
Investigators say the two ships had helipads installed, but that their design is suspect and they were not built to specification, while no load testing was done by Det Norske Veritas of Norway, an international company specializing in helipad certification and safety inspections.
Investigators said the problem was an “open secret” at the administration and the National Airborne Service Corps (NASC), which is in charge of carrying out maritime search-and-rescue operations.
NASC helicopter pilots and crews of administration patrol ships said the helipads on deck did not undergo testing and were not certified, and none of the pilots were willing to risk their life and the aircraft by landing on either the Tainan CG126 or the Xinbei CG127.
Jong Shyn chairman Han Pi-hsiang (韓碧祥) defended the company’s reputation.
“The patrol ships were built according to the designs and the specifications. There were no violations and no illegal activities involved,” Han said. “Helicopters can only land on 3,000-tonne-class vessels, so the contract for the 2,000-tonne patrol ships did not include a helipad. It was only added later by request.”
Prosecutors suspect there were collusion between administration officials and the company, and that it might involve kickbacks, where officials approved the inspection and acceptance testing of the vessels, despite knowing their deficiencies and that they did not conform to the contract specifications.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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