The New Taipei City District Court sentenced a former garbage collector to two years in prison for embezzlement after the man stole 948 trash bags from his job, with the sentence suspended for five years.
The ruling can be appealed.
The man, surnamed Hung (洪), who worked at the Taipei Department of Environmental Protection, confessed to the theft of departmental trash bags to be used at his private enterprise, the court said.
Citing the prosecution, the court said that Hung had over the past two years obtained private contracts to dispose of garbage at two communities in New Taipei City’s Banciao (板橋) and Linkou (林口) districts.
In September 2019, he began to steal bags used by the department for road sweeping to transport trash from the communities to the office of his sanitation team in Taipei’s Wenshan District (文山), the court said.
Hung pocketed about four bags nearly every day during the period, which amounted to about NT$40,953 of stolen government property, it said.
The garbage bags were then incinerated alongside trash collected by sanitation workers in Taipei, it said.
Hung’s actions were revealed on April 27 last year, when New Taipei City Police Department officers and New Taipei City Environmental Protection Bureau inspectors stopped his privately owned truck on a road, it said.
Police found 33 departmental trash bags in the vehicle, including six that were filled with waste and 27 that had not been used, the court said.
Under the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例), the theft of government property by a public servant is punishable by 10 years to life in prison, commutable to a fine, the court said.
The court gave Hung a lighter sentence as he had cooperated with prosecutors and as the value of the stolen items was low, it said.
It ordered Hung to pay a fine of NT$60,000 and perform 160 hours of compulsory labor as conditions for his suspended sentence.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
An inauguration ceremony was held yesterday for the Danjiang Bridge, the world’s longest single-mast asymmetric cable-stayed bridge, ahead of its official opening to traffic on Tuesday, marking a major milestone after nearly three decades of planning and construction. At the ceremony in New Taipei City attended by President William Lai (賴清德), Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) and New Taipei City Mayor Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜), the bridge was hailed as both an engineering landmark and a long-awaited regional transport link connecting Tamsui (淡水) and Bali (八里)
RSS