Taichung judges yesterday ordered two Taichung police officers, one former police officer and an agent from the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) detained on suspicion of receiving bribes from the proprietor of an alleged sex business in Taichung.
The business owner, Yang -Ching-lin (楊清林), has been running bars in Taichung for 10 years that have allegedly been offering sexual services from hostesses, Taichung prosecutors said.
Earlier this year, Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) received letters of complaint from women working at Yang’s bars, alleging they were being controlled and abused by Yang.
The letters said many young women working for Yang lived together in conditions likened to a concentration camp.
Hu asked Taichung prosecutors to investigate.
In August, a search of Yang’s bars, offices and residence, found women living in very poor conditions, as well as other suspicious evidence, the prosecutors said.
Taichung judges ordered the detention of Yang and his wife.
Prosecutors said that Yang, in an effort to receive a lighter sentence, became a witness for prosecutors, allegedly revealing that he had bribed MJIB agents and police officers in Taichung for 10 years so that they would either ignore his bars or give him a heads-up before his bars were about to be raided.
Prosecutors said that in an accounting book they seized from Yang, they discovered Yang spent between NT$50,000 and NT$300,000 a month from 2000 to this year on what is believed to be bribes — a total of more than NT$10 million (US$326,300).
On Thursday, prosecutors raided two Taichung police stations and the MJIB’s Taichung branch. Four police officers and a MJIB agent were summoned for questionings following the raids.
Yesterday morning, Taichung judges ordered the detention of MJIB agent Chu Ching-pei (朱慶培), police officers Kuang Yuan--ching (況源慶) and Kang Tsun-tien (康村田) and former police officer Chen Wen-chung (陳文昌), while police officer Hung Wei-sheng (洪維聲) was released on NT$300,000 bail.
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