Former vice minister of the interior Yen Wan-chin (
Taipei prosecutors have asked for a heavy sentence.
Prosecutors said Yen has been accused of taking NT$1.2 million (US$36,400) in bribes from the Rich Development Corp, a construction firm that was awarded a build-operate-transfer bid to construct a cable-car system connecting Taipei's Beitou District and Yangmingshan National Park.
The prosecution added that Yen was also suspected of embezzling political donations for the Democratic Progressive Party totaling NT$5 million.
In addition, Yen is suspected of accepting airline tickets worth more than NT$80,000 from Trans-Asia Airways president Fan Chih-chiang (
Prosecutors asked the court to sentence Yen to 20 years and seven months in jail for the corruption.
The investigation into Yen initially centered around the plan to construct a cable-car system connecting Beitou with Yangmingshan National Park.
Last December the Rich Development Corp won the bid to construct the cable car system.
It proposed building four cable-car stations, and the Yangmingshan National Park Service Center granted the firm permits for construction in March. The company began construction work in May.
Soon after the permits had been awarded, however, Taipei prosecutors received complaints alleging that the permits had been awarded illegally.
Prosecutors yesterday also charged former Yangmingshan National Park Headquarters Director Tsai Bei-lu (
The prosecution said that Tsai and other officials approved permits for a total of 183 hot spring hotels and restaurants to be built around the cable car stations just a few days before he retired from his park job last month.
The permits were granted without conducting environmental impact assessments, which is illegal.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back
RSS