The Taoyuan District Court yesterday approved the detention of the controversial organization Taiwan Civil Government’s (台灣民政府) founder Roger Lin (林志昇) and placed him under restricted communication.
Prosecutors said they had applied for Lin’s detention to prevent him fleeing, colluding on his testimony or destroying evidence.
Taoyuan authorities on Thursday detained key figures of the group for questioning, after conducting raids at its headquarters and six other locations to investigate allegations of misrepresentation and fraud following complaints filed by former members.
Prosecutors yesterday said they estimated that the group had made more than NT$300 million (US$10.08 million) in illegal profits.
They also discovered illegal firearms and about NT$130 million in cash when they searched Lin’s residence, prosecutors said.
Taoyuan Deputy Chief Prosecutor Wang Yi-wen (王以文) said he intends to file charges against Lin, 67, and his wife, Lin Chih-an (林梓安), 51, of fraud, money laundering and related offenses, as well as confiscate their personal assets.
Prosecutors investigating the case described the Taiwan Civil Government as a “financial scam based on political ideology,” in which Roger Lin and group officials sold memberships and dubious investment schemes, including deceiving people about acquiring US residency status.
In Thursday’s raids, Wang said they also uncovered large quantities of jewelry, along with seven bank accounts with deposits of NT$6 million and US$520,000, and five real-estate properties, all registered under Lin Chih-an’s name.
Roger Lin did not have any property or bank account under his name, but prosecutors said he was facing NT$200 million in tax evasion charges.
Taoyuan prosecutors initiated the judicial probe after receiving complaints from 110 former group members, and conducted several months of surveillance to gather evidence prior to the raids on Thursday.
About 60 cartons of documents and related evidence were gathered in a search of the group’s headquarters in Taoyuan’s Gueishan District (龜山).
Lin and his wife and five other group officials were arrested, and nine witnesses were summoned for questioning.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift