The Kaohsiung Marine Bureau and the residence of former bureau director Wang Tuan-jen (王端仁) were searched yesterday and 22 people summoned for questioning as part of the investigation into the bureau’s lease of Singda Harbor (興達港) to Ching Fu Shipbuilding Co, Kaohsiung prosecutors said.
Wang and another unnamed individual did not appear, and Wang is now listed as one of the seven defendants in two fraud cases against Ching Fu, the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office said.
One case concerns the Singda Harbor deal, the other is linked to the Ministry of National Defense’s NT$35.8 billion (US$1.2 billion at the current exchange rate) contract with Ching Fu to build six minesweepers.
Photo: CNA
The joint task force from the prosecutors’ office and the Agency Against Corruption visited the Kaohsiung Marine Bureau and returned with material relating to the minesweeper deal and several bureau officials involved in the harbor lease, it said.
Officials from the bureau and the Fisheries Agency were summoned to clarify how Ching Fu had been able to lease the harbor, the prosecutors’ office said.
The investigation was triggered by an audio recording made on Oct 7 last year, revealed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Nov 14, in which Ching Fu vice chairman Chen Wei-chih (陳偉志) was allegedly heard talking to Wang and other officials about bidding for the harbor rights.
Fisheries Agency Director-General Chen Tien-shou (陳添壽), his predecessor Tsay Tzu-yaw (蔡日曜) and Wang were all summoned to give their statements, the prosecutors’ office said.
Investigators are trying to determine if government officials were involved in helping Ching Fu win the harbor bid, and if so, they might face charges for contravening the Government Procurement Act (政府採購法) and corruption, the office said.
Sources said the probe into the harbor deal and Ching Fu began after Wang stepped down in the middle of this month.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching