Authorities yesterday conducted searches and detained suspects in several cities and counties in investigations into allegations of vote-buying ahead of elections at regional farmers’ associations, with New Taipei City seeing the most raids.
Officials at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office said they received a tip-off that a candidate, surnamed Chuang (莊), who is running for the chairmanship of an association in Linkou District (林口), and his relatives, paid NT$200,000 per ballot to eligible voters.
Prosecutor Chen Hsiang-chu (陳香君) led police and investigators as they conducted raids at residences and offices belonging to Chuang and other suspects, detaining a total of 70 people for questioning on suspicion of violating the Farmers Association Act (農會法).
Elections of farmers association’s representatives, governing board and supervisors, who are elected every four years, were held last month across the nation.
The vote-buying allegations are related to the elections of association chairman, secretary-general and other top positions, which in some regions were held last weekend, while the rest are to take place this weekend.
Investigations into alleged vote-buying in Taoyuan’s Yangmei District (楊梅) saw prosecutors carry out searches and summon five suspects for questioning, four of whom won posts in last month’s elections.
All five were released after posting bails between NT$100,000 and NT$50,000.
In Nantou County’s Yuchi Township (魚池), prosecutors questioned 28 suspects this week, of whom eight had allegedly admitted to receiving NT$100,000 each from an association executive, surnamed Liu (劉), who won the chairmanship in last weekend’s election.
Liu and his father, both suspected of bribing voters, were released on Wednesday after posting bail of NT$1 million each, while another suspect was released on NT$500,000 bail.
Another investigation is under way Taitung County’s Guanshan Township (關山), where a governing board member, surnamed Chen (陳), of the local association allegedly paid several voters up to NT$10,000 and took them to a KTV parlor in exchange for their support to a friend of his who is running for the secretary-general.
In related news, judicial officials in Hualien County said they received reports that several candidates had prepared millions of New Taiwan dollars in cash to bribe eligible voters in an election for local fishermen’s associations scheduled to be held this weekend.
Hualien County prosecutors yesterday summoned about a dozen executives and governing board members from a local fishermen’s association for questioning.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,