The Judicial Yuan’s Public Functionary Disciplinary Sanction Commission has dismissed five Yilan County police officers who were found guilty of being involved in illegal logging operations and sentenced one officer to 12 years in prison, while the other four received sentences of between one and five years.
The commission convened last week to review the case, after the High Court found the five police officers guilty in March.
The commission was tasked with handing out punishments to the five officers, as the police force is overseen by the government.
The five were convicted of violating the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) in 2012. They were found to have colluded with poaching gangs over the illegal logging of Taiwan cypress, Taiwan red cedar and other trees. The wood of such trees can fetch high prices on the black market.
Two of the five, surnamed Tsai (蔡) and Kao (高), were serving in Yilan County police precincts, while the other three, surnamed Wang (王), Wu (吳) and Tsai (蔡) were serving in the National Police Agency’s forest and nature conservation police unit — known as the “forest police.”
According to official information, the main task of the unit is “to support forest patrolmen to preserve and protect the environment and all historic monuments in all the forests in Taiwan.”
“The three forest police in the case were tasked with protecting forests and helping to preserve mountain ecosystems. It was a twisted, cynical decision for them to ravage forests and mountain ecosystems. It amounted to asking the fox to guard the henhouse,” a committee member who declined to be named said.
The case stemmed from August 2012, after Typhoon Saola swept through Taiwan’s northern regions, which resulted in landslides and devastation to forests in the mountains of Yilan County and neighboring areas.
The five police officers colluded with tree poaching gangs, which are known colloquially as “mountain rats,” by providing road access information, leading the gangs to preserved forest areas, assisting them in cutting down trees, transporting logs down mountain roads and leaking patrol details of other forest police units so that they could evade inspections.
Investigations revealed the police officers received bribes, and commissions ranging from 1 to 5 percent of all sales of the illegally harvested wood.
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
China has reserved offshore airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts that are usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. The alerts, known as notice to air missions (NOTAMs), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert
RSS