The Taichung branch of the High Court on Thursday upheld earlier corruption convictions against former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Nantou County commissioner Lee Chao-ching (李朝卿), handing him cumulative sentences totaling nearly 450 years.
The retrial concerned 94 of 111 counts in which Lee is was found guilty of receiving kickbacks and embezzling funds from public projects.
The High Court cleared Lee on four counts, but upheld verdicts on the other 90, the court ruling showed.
Photo: Hsieh Chieh-yu, Taipei Times
Eighty-one of the sentences carry an average of five to six years in prison.
Lee served two terms as Nantou County commissioner from 2005 to 2012.
He abused his role as a public servant and did not conduct his work in good faith, the ruling said.
“Lee took advantage of many public tenders, procurements and construction projects” by “demanding kickbacks from contractors,” it said.
The kickbacks and embezzlement began in 2008 and involved Lee’s brother-in-law, Chien Jui-chi (簡瑞祺), who acted as an intermediary, with some construction bids being rigged to divert an extra 10 percent of the cost to Lee, the ruling said.
The majority of the cases were related to the reconstruction of bridges, roads, facilities and other public infrastructure in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot in 2009, which caused extensive damage in mountainous areas of central and southern Taiwan.
Lee and Chien have been in prison since August last year, following a High Court verdict on 17 of the cases.
An investigation alleged that Lee abused his authority by demanding 10 percent kickbacks or more from contractors involved in 111 public infrastructure projects, netting a personal benefit of NT$31.71 million (US$998,960 at the current exchange rate).
One such project, involving road and bridge reconstruction after the typhoon, had a budget of NT$94.6 million, from which Lee allegedly received NT$9.49 million from the construction company that secured the public tender, an investigation by public prosecutors showed.
The smallest alleged kickback was for a street sewer repair project in Puli Township (埔里), with a budget of NT$160,000, for which Lee received NT$16,000, prosecutors said.
The corruption investigation was one of the largest involving a local government head in the past decade, with contractors allegedly putting bundles of cash inside gift packs of tea and fruit.
Authorities reported finding several metal tea containers containing NT$30,000 each during a 2012 investigation.
Witnesses and evidence suggested that Chien would visit contractors to collect the kickbacks, which were packaged as gifts.
STRONG RELATIONSHIPS: China would not blockade Taiwan, because President Xi respects him, and Russia would not have invaded if he were president, he said Former US president and the Republican candidate in next month’s presidential election Donald Trump said he would impose additional tariffs on China if China were to “go into Taiwan,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. “I would say: If you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you, at 150 percent to 200 percent,” Trump was quoted as saying in an interview with the WSJ published on Friday. Asked if he would use military force against a blockade on Taiwan by China, Trump said it would not come to that because Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) respected
The Taipei Department of Transportation discouraged YouBike 2.0E users from taking them on long-distance trips after a Taipei city councilor said that riders often use the new electric bike, YouBike 2.0E, to climb Yangmingshan (陽明山). Taipei earlier this year began offering the first 30 minutes of YouBike 2.0 rentals for free, with Taipei and New Taipei offering the YouBike 2.0E on Aug. 30 to encourage rider usage. For YouBike 2.0, the rate is NT$10 per 30 minutes within the first four hours, NT$20 per 30 minutes for five to eight hours and NT$40 per 30 minutes after eight hours. Meanwhile, for e-bikes,
RESOURCE RICH: Taiwan is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire and has up to 30 gigawatts of the potential energy, of which 10 gigawatts could be economically viable Academia Sinica and CPC Corp yesterday began drilling the nation’s first deep geothermal well in Yilan County’s Yuanshan Township (員山). The 4km-deep well is expected to take 18 months to complete and has an estimated investment of NT$337 million (US$10.54 million), Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) said. “While Taiwan has up to 30 gigawatts of potential deep geothermal energy, with an estimated 10 gigawatts being economically viable, only by digging wells can we determine the actual amount of commercially viable geothermal energy,” Liao said at the project’s opening ceremony. Data collected during and after the excavation process would be used for future
HACKERS’ MARKET: Chat logs about Taiwan and documents outlining ways to take over online accounts were leaked from a company that sells data from hacks Taiwanese cybersecurity specialists found 577 leaked documents which show that the Chinese Communist Party is engaging in “cognitive warfare” against Taiwan through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, a documentary released last month by Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed. The filmmakers behind Tracking China’s Leaked Documents said they spent six months visiting seven countries, including Taiwan, where they interviewed members of TeamT5, a malware research and cybersecurity firm, which found the leaked documents. TeamT5 said they discovered a string of mysterious URLs on the social media platform X, which they suspected could be accounts created by hackers or people who leaked data, which led