Nantou prosecutors yesterday searched the Nantou County Government building and the residence of county commissioner Lee Chao-ching (李朝卿) as part of a corruption investigation.
Prosecutors said more than 20 Nantou county officials were summoned for questioning yesterday following the raid.
Several businessmen who have won construction projects from the county were also interviewed by prosecutors.
The questioning was ongoing as of press time.
Five prosecutors and agents from the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau launched the raids in 10 locations early yesterday morning.
Lee’s office and residence were the main focus of the search, prosecutors said, adding that they had seized a number of documents.
Lee is a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Prosecutors said they suspected Lee and other officials had rigged a number of public bids for construction projects in the county in 2006.
They were suspected of leaking confidential information about the bids to certain businessmen before the bids took place, prosecutors said.
The officials were also suspected of receiving kickbacks from businessmen as they gave several of the county’s senior residents gifts during last year’s Double Nine Festival, a lunar holiday during which people pay their respects to the elderly.
Prosecutors said they did not summon Lee for questioning yesterday, but they would interview him soon.
Lee told reporters yesterday that the county administration was clean, but he would cooperate with prosecutors in the investigation.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
RSS