A Taipei city councilor and her former office assistant were yesterday indicted on suspicion of embezzling NT$267,219 of public funds.
Independent Taipei City Councilor Lin Ying-meng (林穎孟) and Yeh Yao-chang (葉曜彰) were charged with contravening the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) and the Criminal Code, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said.
Lin was elected in December 2018 and is one of 12 councilors representing the city’s Daan (大安) and Wenshan (文山) districts. She was a member of the New Power Party from 2017 to 2020.
Photo: Cheng Ming-hsiang, Taipei Times
On Dec. 5, 2018, Lin hired Yeh as a publicly funded assistant and on Dec. 25 that year recruited a student surnamed Yang (楊) to work part-time at her office, prosecutors said.
Yang worked for Lin until Sept. 18, 2019, but Lin applied for a subsidy of NT$35,563 from the city to help cover Yang’s pay for October that year, prosecutors said.
There were more issues the following year after Yeh left his job in Lin’s office and started a public relations firm on March 31, 2020, prosecutors said.
Lin allegedly helped Yeh, who was her boyfriend at the time, forge documents to obtain city funds to pay the salary of an employee, surnamed Kuo (郭), at his firm starting in April 2020, prosecutors said.
Lin registered Kuo as her assistant and put her on the city’s payroll, defrauding the city of NT$231,656, prosecutors said.
Lin and Yeh have denied the allegations.
Lin told prosecutors that Yang had worked in her office until the end of October 2019 and that Kuo worked as an office assistant for her while also serving as her ex-boyfriend’s employee.
Regulations state that an elected councilor in any of the six special municipalities can hire up to eight assistants to conduct research on policy issues and provide services to constituents. They can be paid up to NT$80,000 per month in public funds.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Temperatures in New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店) climbed past 37°C yesterday, as the Central Weather Administration (CWA) issued heat alerts for 16 municipalities, warning the public of intense heat expected across Taiwan. The hottest location in Taiwan was in Sindian, where the mercury reached 37.5°C at about 2pm, according to CWA data. Taipei’s Shilin District (士林) recorded a temperature of 37.4°C at noon, Taitung County’s Jinfeng Township (金峰) at 12:50 pm logged a temperature of 37.4°C and Miaoli County’s Toufen Township (頭份) reached 36.7°C at 11:40am, the CWA said. The weather agency yesterday issued a yellow level information notice for Taipei, New
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
RSS