Six active and retired officers from Taipei’s Zhongzheng First Precinct have been detained on suspicion of taking bribes to cover up illegal sex industry activities, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday.
Officers Wu I-ming (吳翊銘), Yan Tzu-en (顏子恩), Hou Chao-pin (侯朝斌), Tseng Chi-hsun (曾紀勳) and Yang Chih-ching (楊智清) and retired officer Ma Kuo-tung (馬國棟) are being investigated, but all deny the charges, prosecutors said, adding that the Taipei District Court authorized their arrest yesterday.
The officers’s statements were inconsistent with one given by the proprietor of a hostess bar that has been linked to the case, the court said.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
Investigators are in touch with one witness who is to appear in court, they said, adding that they are not ruling out identifying more suspects.
Initial investigations found evidence that the six officers and the hostess bar proprietor appeared to have a relationship of “great mutual benefit,” they said.
All six officers had some connection with Zhongzheng First Precinct, but four of them are now stationed elsewhere, including Hou, who is a sergeant at the Dali Street Police Station in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華); Yan, who is a detective at Tainan’s Yongkang Precinct; Tseng, who is a sergeant at the Taipei City Police Department; and Yang, who is a police officer at Taipei’s Andong Road Police Station.
On Thursday people related to the case were questioned in the third stage of the investigations, prosecutors said, adding that several more people would be questioned after they finish studying the evidence.
The investigation began in July last year, when investigators working with the National Immigration Agency began looking into foreign women involved in the nation’s sex industry, prosecutors said.
The hostess bar proprietor, who was questioned at the time, relocated and continued operating the business under the new name “Hsiao Hsiao (曉曉),” they said, adding that the case came to the attention of the police when internal strife among investors in the hostess bar came to a head, as the business was doing poorly at its new location.
The proprietor held police at bay with bribes until the case was exposed, the office said.
The officers were allegedly paid NT$40,000 per month by head hostess Wu Hui-ling (巫蕙玲), prosecutors said, adding that payments were higher during annual holidays, such as the Lunar New Year and Dragon Boat Festival.
Wu allegedly hid the transactions by referring to police as tudigong (“earth god”) during phone calls and having well-known liquor vendor Pao Ming-pu (鮑銘璞) act as a middleman.
Investigators in March successfully applied for arrest warrants for former Zhongzheng First Precinct police chief Lin Chung-cheng (林崇成), officers Kao Chen-chieh (郜振傑), Chi Ping-chang (紀炳場) and Chen Hung-chou (陳宏洲), as well as Wu and hostess bar manager Hu Chin-lien (胡錦蓮). The Taipei District Court on May 8 approved an extension of their detention.
Several others were released on bail, including Pao, whose bail was set at NT$100,000; hostess bar accountant Yang Yu-chi (楊瑀琦), released on NT$500,000 bail; bar owner Hsieh An-fang (謝安芳), on NT$200,000 bail; and contracted accountant Huang Kuang-hsiung (黃光雄), on NT$50,000 bail.
Ten police officers and two people associated with the hostess bar were being detained as of press time last night.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai