Former Legislative Yuan secretary-general Lin Hsi-shan (林錫山) and 12 others were yesterday indicted for alleged irregularities in the procurement of computers for the legislature over a six-year period.
After a nearly four-month investigation, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said Lin received NT$39.5 million (US$1.22 million) in kickbacks for helping Farnet Technologies Co secure contracts for the supply of computers.
Farnet won 33 contacts from the legislature between 2011 and last year, and it was usually the lone bidder, prosecutors said.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Also indicted were Lin’s wife, Liu Hsin-wei (劉馨蔚); Chen Lu-sheng (陳露生), a former section chief at the legislature’s Information Technology Office; Farnet Technologies chairman Lee Pao-cheng (李保承); six legislative staffers and four Farnet employees.
The investigation was launched after prosecutors received a tip in 2013 alleging that Lin had been taking kickbacks from the company.
Lin was legislative secretary-general from February 1999 to Jan. 31 this year, the day before a new legislature was seated.
He had represented Changhua County as a legislator from 1990 to 1999, before former legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) tapped him for the position.
NATURE TAKES ITS COURSE: The agency’s head said he felt a sense of loss watching red-banded snakes eat the babies, as they had decided on non-intervention The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday released a documentary on a hundred-pace viper that had incubated 16 eggs, all of which hatched, but only a baby viper escaped after they were attacked by red-banded snakes. The agency’s Taichung branch last year launched the viper reproduction monitoring project soon after forest rangers Lin Chun-yu (林俊佑) and Chou Chia-cheng (周家成) spotted a pregnant hundred-pace viper in a grass-covered burrow near a parking lot in Tbulan Village (松鶴部落). The Atayal village, in Taichung’s Heping District (和平), is headed by Ecyang Yapu, who was positive about the project and assisted in access control and power
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said that it had deployed vessels to “monitor” Chinese ships operating in waters off the east coast. The CGA said it dispatched vessels in response to a China Coast Guard announcement that it had carried out another “routine law-enforcement patrol” in waters off the east coast. “The CGA firmly rejects China’s cognitive warfare campaign of ‘law enforcement in name, jurisdictional expansion in practice,’” it said on X. As of 11am yesterday, two China Coast Guard ships were “loitering and drifting” about 105 nautical miles (195km) and 74 nautical miles east of Green Island (綠島) respectively, it said. It
A sharp rise in compensation to be paid by air force officers who leave before completing their required service could indicate an increase in pilots leaving the military early, an analyst said on Friday, warning that the trend could worsen a shortage of experienced personnel. Chieh Chung (揭仲), a researcher at the Association for Strategic Foresight, issued the warning even though the number of volunteer military personnel is expected to increase next year. The planned headcount for volunteer military personnel, covering officers, noncommissioned officers (NCO) and enlisted soldiers, is 158,223 for next year, up 4,258 from 153,965 this year, Chieh said. The increase
Potential improvements to munitions used by China’s long-range rocket-artillery units could extend their range to cover the entire Miyako Strait, which might give the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) the ability to secure the strategic waterway, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said in a report. The PLA’s long-range rocket-artillery units deployed along the Taiwan Strait are concentrated along the coast of Fujian Province, including Changle, Pingtan and Shishi, the quarterly report on China said. The artillery brigades of the PLA’s 71st, 72nd and 73rd group armies have been deployed, with preparations for potential battlefield operations under way since August 2022, the report