The Kaohsiung Branch of the Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld the conviction of former judge Lin Kun-cheng (林崑城) on corruption charges linked to the solicitation of about NT$20 million (US$683,667 at the current exchange rate) in bribes from more than a dozen people.
After graduating from the Ministry of Justice’s Academy for the Judiciary, Lin worked as a prosecutor, rising steadily through the ranks to become a judge at the district level before being promoted to the High Court, where he served terms as presiding judge.
After more than two decades of working for the judiciary, he entered private practice, taking on litigation cases.
However, an investigation found that he solicited bribes from plaintiffs or defendants, promising to deliver a favorable judgment due to his extensive contacts and good relationships with judges and other court officials.
The investigation found that he took money from 13 individuals between 2009 and 2012, ranging from NT$300,000 to NT$2.5 million, and deposited the money in his personal bank accounts.
If a judgement went against one of the people who had paid him a bribe to influence a judge, Lin blamed it on problems with the court, but if his client won their case, then Lin would ask for more money for helping ensure a favorable decision, investigators found.
In the first ruling in his case by a district court last year, he was convicted on 18 counts of financial fraud and related charges, and was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison.
Lin appealed the verdict.
Yesterday’s ruling was final, and cannot be appealed, as the High Court upheld the conviction and the sentence from the first ruling.
“After becoming a lawyer in 1996, Lin reaped undue personal financial benefits through illegal means, acting as a middleman to pass on bribe money to judicial officials,” the High Court said in its ruling.
“Lin used his position as a litigator to take advantage of the desire by both plaintiffs and defendants to win their lawsuits. Lin claimed that he had good relationships and personal contacts within the justice system and could deliver bribes to the presiding judges,” the court said in its statement.
“Lin’s actions violated judicial regulations and the code of conduct for lawyers. He also tarnished the reputation of court judges, undermined public trust and brought discredit to the nation’s judicial system,” it said.
Lin, now 68, was originally indicted on corruption charges in 2012, but he fled to China and did not return to Taiwan until 2016, at which point his case proceeded to court.
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