Tainan City Fisheries Association Director-General Lin Shih-chieh (林 士傑) was on Saturday arrested in connection to allegations of vote-buying in the Tainan City Council speaker election last month.
The Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement that Lin — who failed to show up after being summoned for questioning on Wednesday — was being held incommunicado due to concerns he might flee or collude with suspected accomplices or witnesses.
After prosecutors threatened to have him arrested last week, Lin, accompanied by his lawyer, turned himself in on Friday morning, whereupon he was arrested on suspicion of vote-buying.
Photo: Wang Chieh, Taipei Times
Prosecutors filed a request with the Tainan District Court to hold Lin incommunicado, which was approved on Saturday.
Prosecutors also requested the detention of Tainan city councilors Lee Wen-chun (李文俊) and Huang Li-chao (黃麗招).
Huang, an independent, and Lee, whom the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) expelled for defying the party whip in the speaker election, were released on bail on Wednesday after being questioned by prosecutors.
The arrests are related to an investigation into the Dec. 25 election of Tainan City Council Speaker Chiu Li-li (邱莉莉) and Deputy Speaker Lin Chih-chan (林志展), both members of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Chiu defeated former speaker Kuo Hsin-liang (郭信良) in a 36-to-21 vote that saw three KMT councilors, including Lee, break party ranks to back the DPP nominee.
On Tuesday, prosecutors brought Lin Chih-chan and Chiu in for questioning along with eight others after executing a series of search warrants on 26 locations, including the homes of the speaker and deputy speaker, as well as KMT city councilors Lee Wen-chun, Chang Shih-hsieng (張世賢) and Lee Chen-kuo (李鎮國).
Lin Chih-chan and Chiu were released on bail on Wednesday, while Lin Shih-chieh, former DPP Central Executive Committee member Kuo Tsai-chin (郭再欽) and Lee Wen-chun’s girlfriend, a woman surnamed Huang (黃), are still in detention.
Kuo allegedly used Yuan Shan International Development Co chairman Yang Chih-chiang (楊志強) and Lin Shih-chieh, who is the father of DPP Tainan City Councilor Lin Yi-ting (林依婷), as intermediaries to manipulate the election result, investigators said.
Lin Shih-chieh, who has past convictions for firearms offenses, is under investigation for threatening KMT Tainan City Councilor Fang Yi-feng (方一峰) ahead of the election.
Prosecutors had questioned Lin on Dec. 23, 2020. He was released on bail of NT$50,000 and left the DPP shortly after.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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