Thirty-one New Taipei City school officials who were accused of accepting bribes from school lunch providers yesterday received prison terms in a second trial at the Taiwan High Court.
However, several defendants who pleaded guilty were given lighter punishments than the ones they received in the first trial.
Of the 38 defendants, 23 principals and one director pleaded innocent.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The prison sentence handed to former New Taipei City Municipal Touqian Junior-High School principal Tseng Mao-shan (曾茂山), who accepted NT$1.4 million (US$43,335 at current exchange rates) in bribes, was reduced from 10 years and six months to seven years and 10 months.
Other defendants who received prison terms of more than seven years include former Chonghe Elementary School principal Fu Yu-ning (傅育寧), who took NT$900,000, and former Wang Xi Elementary School principal Pan Chiao-ning (潘教寧), who took NT$1.01 million.
Ko Feng (柯份), who had been certified by the Ministry of Education as an “excellent teacher and a principal demonstrating outstanding leadership,” was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison for accepting kickbacks totaling NT$281,000.
The scandal erupted in 2011 when prosecutors were investigating a case of maggots in lunch boxes at a school.
The prosecutors found that between 2002 and 2011, 10 catering firms had paid school officials kickbacks ranging from NT$2 to NT$4 per lunch box, or between NT$100,000 and NT$500,000 per contract, in exchange for serving as the schools’ exclusive lunch provider and to avoid liability if problems were found with the food.
Deputy Minister of Education Lin Teng-chiao (林騰蛟), who was head of the New Taipei City Education Department when the scandal broke, said that several new measures to curb corruption have been introduced.
Lin said the measures included a “group tender solicitation” scheme and restrictions on firms wanting to make donations to schools.
Additional reporting by Yang Kuo-wen
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