Yunlin County Council Speaker Huang Kai (黃凱) was detained and held incommunicado yesterday on suspicion of accepting a bribe in exchange for helping a company get a license for its solar power plant.
Huang was ordered detained by the New Taipei District Court based on a request by New Taipei City prosecutors after they provided evidence alleging Huang took bribes from Kuo Jin Energy Co (國金能源), the New Taipei City District Prosecutors Office said.
The judge granted the motion after concluding that Huang could potentially tamper with evidence.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
On Thursday, New Taipei City prosecutor Chou Yi-Jun (周懿君) led officials from the Investigation Bureau’s New Taipei City office on a raid of 40 locations across western Taiwan from Tainan to Taipei and seized NT$2.32 million (US$71,533) in cash and several items, including two SUVs, and five name-brand watches.
It was estimated that the entire case allegedly involved more than NT$10 million in bribes.
On the same day as the raids, Huang and 21 others, including Yunlin County Government workers and those from the green energy industry including a man surnamed Lien (連), were brought in for questioning.
Prosecutors suspect that Huang violated the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) by accepting bribes and engaging in money laundering, offenses carrying a jail sentence of at least five years, prompting the request to hold him incommunicado.
According to an investigation by prosecutors, Huang allegedly accepted bribes from Lien and facilitated the issuance of an operating license for his company’s solar photovoltaic power plant located in Taihsi Township, Yunlin County.
Prosecutors said Lee Chun-hsing (李俊興), head of the Yunlin County government’s Economic Affairs Department, allegedly leaked internal county reviews of other applications to set up green power plants to Huang, who allegedly set up a shell company to accept the bribes.
If found guilty, Huang would follow in the footsteps of his predecessor Shen Tsung-lung (沈宗隆) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The former Yunlin County Council speaker resigned from the post in October 2023 after pleading guilty to accepting bribes from a wind power company during an earlier investigation that year.
Huang assumed his post following a by-election.
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 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
China has reserved offshore airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts that are usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday. 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. The 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
RSS