The Taoyuan District Court yesterday approved the detention of the controversial organization Taiwan Civil Government’s (台灣民政府) founder Roger Lin (林志昇) and placed him under restricted communication.
Prosecutors said they had applied for Lin’s detention to prevent him fleeing, colluding on his testimony or destroying evidence.
Taoyuan authorities on Thursday detained key figures of the group for questioning, after conducting raids at its headquarters and six other locations to investigate allegations of misrepresentation and fraud following complaints filed by former members.
Prosecutors yesterday said they estimated that the group had made more than NT$300 million (US$10.08 million) in illegal profits.
They also discovered illegal firearms and about NT$130 million in cash when they searched Lin’s residence, prosecutors said.
Taoyuan Deputy Chief Prosecutor Wang Yi-wen (王以文) said he intends to file charges against Lin, 67, and his wife, Lin Chih-an (林梓安), 51, of fraud, money laundering and related offenses, as well as confiscate their personal assets.
Prosecutors investigating the case described the Taiwan Civil Government as a “financial scam based on political ideology,” in which Roger Lin and group officials sold memberships and dubious investment schemes, including deceiving people about acquiring US residency status.
In Thursday’s raids, Wang said they also uncovered large quantities of jewelry, along with seven bank accounts with deposits of NT$6 million and US$520,000, and five real-estate properties, all registered under Lin Chih-an’s name.
Roger Lin did not have any property or bank account under his name, but prosecutors said he was facing NT$200 million in tax evasion charges.
Taoyuan prosecutors initiated the judicial probe after receiving complaints from 110 former group members, and conducted several months of surveillance to gather evidence prior to the raids on Thursday.
About 60 cartons of documents and related evidence were gathered in a search of the group’s headquarters in Taoyuan’s Gueishan District (龜山).
Lin and his wife and five other group officials were arrested, and nine witnesses were summoned for questioning.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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