Fifteen people, including two Taoyuan International Airport Corp (TIAC) officials, were yesterday indicted by the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office for their alleged involvement in corruption related to the Terminal 2 expansion and related projects at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
The prosecutors’ investigation found evidence of suspected bid-rigging related to the airport’s Terminal 2 expansion, as well as projects to improve runways and utilities, the office said.
TIAC engineering head Lin Wen-chen (林文楨), 58, and his deputy, Wu Chun-tsung (吳俊宗), 45, had allegedly demanded 3 percent in kickbacks on project costs from contractors, the office said, adding that problematic projects in which they were involved were estimated to have aggregated funding of up to NT$4 billion (US$131.6 million at the current exchange rate).
Photo: Chou Min-hung, Taipei Times
Lin, Wu and the other suspects were charged with contravening the Government Procurement Act (政府採購法) and the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例).
Evidence showed that Lin had allegedly received kickbacks totaling NT$2.54 million from various contractors, with Lin and Wu leaking the details of projects to help contractors win the bids, prosecutors said.
The main contractors involved were New Asia Co (新亞建設) and CTCI Smart Engineering Corp (益鼎工程), part of CTCI Corp, while the subcontractors implicated in the case included Dong Chun Construction (東群營造), Shun Ho Chang Engineering (順厚倡工程), Yung Heng Engineering (永衡工程) and Fu Yang Engineering (富暘工程), prosecutors said.
Evidence showed that Lin and Wu, the TIAC officials in charge of the airport expansion and construction projects, had allegedly colluded with executives of New Asia Co and subcontractors, with Lin instructing Wu as an intermediary in dealing with the firms and taking kickbacks in different phases, prosecutors said.
In addition, in a related project for groundwork and foundation construction on Terminal 3, Lin had reportedly received kickbacks in the form of paid vacations from subcontractor Apex Science and Engineering Corp (夆典科技), the prosecutors said.
In exchange for helping it to obtain the contract for the project, Apex allegedly paid Lin’s NT$18,000 airfare for a trip to Cambodia in March 2017, and in August 2017, it paid NT$228,500 for Lin and his family to travel to Okinawa, Japan, the prosecutors’ office said.
“Lin heads up the engineering department at TIAC, but he forgot the importance of the post and his duty. In his pursuit of money, he had over long periods made demands for and received kickbacks from contractors,” the indictment said.
“He leaked vital tender project information to the contractors for financial benefits, and this case severely undermined the public trust regarding ethical dealings by employees of state-run companies,” it added.
Surveillance of the employees began in 2017 after leaking roofs, flooding and bursting toilet pipes plagued the newly renovated Terminal 2, and investigators received tips from TIAC staff about engineering shortcuts and the use of inferior construction materials, prosecutors said.
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,