Prosecutors yesterday filed an appeal at the Taiwan High Court looking to overturn the acquittal of Hualien County commissioner Fu Kun-chi on charges of tax evasion and perjury relating to a financial dispute over the Promised Land Resort & Lagoon project.
Fu allegedly used undue political influence in 2010, when he held the office of Hualien County commissioner, to force the original proprietor of the Promised Land Resort & Lagoon project to sell a 66.1-hectare plot of land in the county’s Shoufong Township (壽豐) below its market price to Rong Liang Real Estate (榮亮實業), which in turn sold it to another property developer and made a profit of NT$166.7 million, prosecutors said.
In the first ruling by the Hualien District Court last month, judges found Fu not guilty, saying the other defendant, Pao Kuang-ting (鮑廣廷), was the head of Rong Liang, not Fu.
Pao was handed a 20-month suspended sentence.
Hualien County Head Prosecutor Wang Yi-jen (王怡仁) said that aside from providing more details regarding the evidence from the first trial, prosecutors would be presenting eight additional items to prove that Fu headed the company and controlled its finances with bank accounts held by him and his wife, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsu Chen-wei (徐榛蔚).
In particular, Wang cited video evidence and Chinese media reports from October 2012, when Fu visited China’s Nanning City and openly presented himself as chairman of Rong Liang.
He also signed a “strategic cooperation agreement” with Nanning City government officials, aiming to encourage Chinese conglomerates to invest in the development of real-estate projects in Taiwan, Wang said.
Fu began serving an eight-month prison sentence on Tuesday for insider trading and stock manipulation.
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