The Taipei District Court on Wednesday sentenced Fanny Liu (劉樂妍), a former member of the now-disbanded female pop group Fantasy 4, to 10 years in prison for vote-buying.
The court found Liu — who is now based in China and has made pro-Chinese Communist Party remarks — guilty of reducing the rent on a Taipei property she owned in exchange for the tenant voting for a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate in the November 2018 nine-in-one local elections.
She can appeal the ruling.
Photo: Chien Li-chung, Taipei Times
Liu in December 2018 reportedly lowered the rent by NT$1,000 after the tenant said they had voted for Taipei City Councilor Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強), prosecutors said.
Liu was to appear in court last year, but did not show up, citing her busy work schedule in China, prosecutors said, adding that they first learned of the vote-buying when Liu posted about it on Facebook.
“What I’m doing here is not vote-buying, but rather it is intervening in the elections with Chinese capital,” she wrote.
A Taiwanese Facebook user saw the post and passed a screenshot of it to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office.
After an investigation confirmed the payment, prosecutors charged Liu with vote-buying.
During questioning, Liu reportedly admitted to vote-buying, saying she had asked the tenant to vote for Lo, as she knew that their household registration listed them with an address in Taipei’s sixth electoral district, where Lo was running for councilor, prosecutors said.
Liu said the NT$1,000 was to cover the cost of taxi fare to the polling station, they added.
Prosecutors also questioned the tenant, who said that Liu always discussed politics with them, but that they “did not want to listen to it.”
The tenant reportedly told Liu that they had voted when they had not, prosecutors said, adding that they checked election records and confirmed that the tenant had not voted.
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was sentenced to six months in prison, commutable to a fine, by the New Taipei District Court today for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) in a case linked to an alleged draft-dodging scheme. Wang allegedly paid NT$3.6 million (US$114,380) to an illegal group to help him evade mandatory military service through falsified medical documents, prosecutors said. He transferred the funds to Chen Chih-ming (陳志明), the alleged mastermind of a draft-evasion ring, although he lost contact with him as he was already in detention on fraud charges, they said. Chen is accused of helping a
SECURITY: Starlink owner Elon Musk has taken pro-Beijing positions, and allowing pro-China companies to control Taiwan’s critical infrastructure is risky, a legislator said Starlink was reluctant to offer services in Taiwan because of the nation’s extremely high penetration rates in 4G and 5G services, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said yesterday. The ministry made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which reviewed amendments to Article 36 of the Telecommunications Management Act (電信管理法). Article 36 bans foreigners from holding more than 49 percent of shares in public telecommunications networks, while shares foreigners directly and indirectly hold are also capped at 60 percent of the total, unless specified otherwise by law. The amendments, sponsored by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
RSS