One former and one current Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) city councilor are under investigation on charges of fraud regarding unearned office assistant salaries.
Former Keelung city councilor Han Liang-yin (韓良圻) was indicted on corruption charges on Thursday for the alledged embezzlement of NT$8.9 million (US$319,340) in public funds.
Han, 64, had won a city councilor seat five times, first in 1998. He did not run in the 2018 elections due to illness and has since been retired from elected politics.
Prosecutors said that Han put family members on the government payroll for most of his two decades in office. Prosecutors alledge that two people, surnamed Yang (簡) and Chien (簡), were hired as assistants without performing any work.
Each elected councilor in Taiwan’s six special municipality city councils can hire up to eight assistants for policy research and to provide services to constituents. Public funds up to NT$80,000 can be paid per assistant in monthly salary, according to the Regulations on Allowances for Elected Representatives and Subsidies for Village Heads and Wardens (地方民意代表費用支給及村里長事務補助費補助條例).
Han’s son, Han Shih-yu (韓世昱), who has held a seat on the Keelung city council since 2018, was detained for four months to prevent collusion in testimony, and was released on NT$1 million bail on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Taichung City Councilor Jan Ling-hsuan (冉齡軒) was detained following a court hearing on Thursday to prevent destruction of evidence and collusion in testimony, as well as because he is considered a flight risk.
Authorities conducted raids at seven locations in Taichung on Wednesday and served summonses for 23 people for questioning, including Jan and her husband, regarding suspected fraudulent office assistant salaries.
Taichung prosecutors listed 13 of the 23 people as suspects who face pending charges of contravening provisions of the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例), while the other 10 are listed as witnesses.
Jan allegedly had several assistants on the payroll who did not work in her office, and is alleged to have personally embezzled money from the additional salaries, prosecutors said.
Jan’s husband was released after questioning, posting NT$50,000 bail.
Separately, the High Court on Wednesday upheld a guilty verdict against former independent Taipei city councilor Tung Chung-yen (童仲彥) for embezzling NT$120,000 in unearned office assistant salaries while he was in office.
However, his sentence was reduced from more than seven years to three-and-a-half years.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
RSS