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.
FEW REMAIN: Conservationists tried to stop the demolition, but to no avail, and the owner cannot be fined, as the structure was not listed as a historical building One of the few remaining Japanese colonial-era granaries in Taiwan was dismantled by its owner on Friday, prompting outrage from conservationists. The granary, which was at No. 16, Lane 11, Hangzhou S Rd Sec 1 in Taipei, belonged to Taiwan Takushoku Corp during the colonial era, conservationist Chang Wan-lin (張琬琳) said, adding that she and others had been collecting information to reapply to have the building protected as a historical structure. During the colonial era, the granary served the area from Monga (艋舺) to what is now Songshan District (松山) in the north, she said. “Back then the eastern part
SEEING THE POSITIVE: A majority of respondents in Taiwan said that they favored Trump because they think Taiwan-US ties would improve with him Among eight Asia-Pacific countries and regions, only Taiwan prefers US President Donald Trump over his challenger, former US vice president Joe Biden, in the upcoming US presidential election, a survey released on Thursday showed. According to the poll published by UK-based market research firm YouGov, 42 percent of Taiwanese favor Trump in the Nov. 3 election, while 30 percent back Biden and 28 percent have no opinion. In contrast, respondents in Malaysia favor Biden over Trump 62 percent to 9 percent, and in Singapore by 66 percent to 12 percent, the survey showed. Biden also led Trump in Australia (60 percent to 21
TROUBLEMAKER: The missiles, capable of striking up to 2,000km away, would likely be used to deter other nations from coming to Taiwan’s aid, a legislator said The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has reportedly deployed advanced hypersonic missiles along China’s southeast coast, which Taiwan’s missile defense system might have difficulty intercepting, an analyst said yesterday. Citing an unnamed military source, the South China Morning Post said that the missile bases on the coasts of China’s Fujian and Zhejiang provinces have been upgraded and are stocked with DF-17 missiles, equipped with hypersonic glide vehicles. “The DF-17 hypersonic missile will gradually replace the old DF-11s and DF-15s that were deployed in the southeast region for decades,” said the source, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. “The
AIR CONTROL INCIDENT: The Hong Kong side said it ‘cannot accept this aircraft,’ ordering it to ascend to an unsafe altitude and forcing it to return to Kaohsiung The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) on Friday disclosed a full transcript of the communications between Taiwanese and Hong Kong air traffic controllers, rebutting the latter’s claim that a Taiwanese plane had voluntarily abandoned its flight path. Hong Kong denied permission for the plane to proceed to the disputed Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島), which are claimed by both Taiwan and China, the CAA said. The incident happened on Thursday when a civil aircraft chartered by the military was advised by Hong Kong air traffic controllers to not enter the airspace over a group of islands in the South China Sea
RSS