Former Taichung City Council secretary-general Chen Chien-kai (陳健楷) was found guilty on charges of receiving kickbacks and bribes of up to tens of millions of NT dollars for the city government’s public infrastructure projects, with the Taichung District Court handing him a 20-year prison term in the first ruling yesterday.
Chen, 51, who is a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), was Taichung City Council secretary-general from 2007 to 2011.
The court yesterday found Chen guilty of corruption, using his position to demand between 30 and 50 percent in kickbacks for at least 11 public tender projects, including renovations to the Taichung City Council building, which had a total budget of NT$481.76 million (US$14.77 million). An investigation uncovered Chen received NT$71.58 million from contractors who won the project contract with Chen’s help.
The court stripped Chen of his civil rights for eight years.
The court also found Chen’s younger brother, Chen Chien-chieh (陳建杰), guilty of similar offenses and sentenced him to two in years prison. Another accomplice, Liu Ting-nien (劉延年), was sentenced to four years and two months in prison.
Overall, 15 city government officials and the executives and staff of 12 construction companies were found guilty in the case and received prison sentences.
Investigations began when Typhoon Soulik struck Taiwan in July 2013, causing flood damage to the Taichung City Council building with heavy leaking and water pouring from top stories of the building, which led to extensive media coverage.
Judicial officials suspected the project had engineering flaws and used inferior materials for construction, as the building had just been completed at a cost of NT$2.6 billion.
A probe by judicial officials, including surveillance of suspects, led to the discovery of Chen’s collusion in 11 public tender projects.
Investigators also found Chen had accepted “treats,” such as lavish banquets at restaurants, a night at Taichung’s Golden Jaguar nightclub and gambling in Macau, with all expenses paid for by the contractors.
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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