Public prosecutors indicted 15 people yesterday — five former city government officials and 10 members of Ysolar Group (力暘集團) — after an investigation into a controversial solar energy project in Tainan’s Cigu District (七股)
The case involved former Tainan Economic Development Bureau chief Chen Kai-ling (陳凱凌) and his subordinate officials who were acccused of revising regulations and circumventing procedures to secure land for Ysolar Group projects, in a scheme projected to net NT$9.126 billion over 20 years, the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office said.
Ysolar Group president Ku Sheng-hui (古盛煇) and general manager Hsu Shuo-ting (徐碩廷), two principal figures in the case, were indicted, along with executives of five subsidiary companies of Ysolar Group for their involvement, prosecutors said.
Photo: Wang Chieh, Taipei Times
During the investigation, prosecutors said they carried out six raids to serve summons and gather evidence, and took in 246 people for questioning.
Ku and his five subsidiary companies purchased land in Cigu District in 2020 and 2021, with plans to set up photovoltaic panels for general solar energy, prosecutors said, adding that the companies hoped to receive government subsidies for the project.
Ku allegedly colluded with Chen and his subordinates to circumvent restrictions on “plots of land of under two hectares” and to revise regulations through illicit means to permit the construction of a solar energy project on agricultural land, the indictment filing showed.
Chen and his officials assisted in the falsifying of documents, instructing Ku’s companies to revise the dates on application papers for the planned projects in Cigu, to retroactively be included in a plan by the Ministry of Economic Affairs “to generate 6.5 gigawatts of energy by solar photovoltaic panels by 2020,” the filing said.
Prosecutors alleged that Chen illegitimately favored the Ysolar projects by removing the original application papers, and replacing them with retroactively dated papers, to enable the projects to be included in the ministry’s 2020 target for solar energy production and to help bypass the “plots of land under two hectares” restriction on land-use.
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