Former legislator Tsai Hau (蔡豪) faces a prison term after the Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the 63-year-old’s appeal against a conviction for sexual assault involving a woman who worked at his consultancy company.
The court said that there was sufficient evidence for the conviction and affirmed a lower court’s sentence of four years, 10 months.
It was the final ruling and cannot be appealed.
In 2016, a woman working at the Kaohsiung-based company said that Tsai sexually assaulted her twice.
The woman told the courts that she was asked to help host businesspeople who were to meet in Tsai’s office in July that year.
After the meeting, Tsai took out a bottle of whiskey and told her to try it, she said, adding that she became drunk.
Tsai kissed and groped her in the office, she told the courts.
The next day she went to a hospital for a medical examination, but Tsai intervened, saying that he wanted to help, she said in testimony.
However, he took her to a motel, where he sexually assaulted her a second time, she said.
First elected as an independent legislator from Pingtung County in 1999, Tsai served three terms until 2008.
He joined the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union ahead of his final term from 2004 and before it finished he joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which he represented while seeking a councilor’s seat in Pingtung County in 2009.
Tsai won the seat, but the result was nullified after the Pingtung District Court convicted him on vote-buying charges for paying residents NT$500 to vote for him.
Tsai has another ongoing lawsuit, an appeal to the Supreme Court after the High Court convicted him of forgery in a 2011 fraud case, in which he was sentenced to four years, 10 months in a second ruling.
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