A former civil engineering professor has been sentenced to two years in jail for forgery after he was found to have lied about sending qualified personnel to conduct more than 500 bridge inspections in Yilan County beginning in 2018.
In a verdict released last week, the Yilan District Court said the falsified inspections were connected to Wan Qiao Feng Engineering Technology Consultancy, a company founded by former Chien Hsin University of Science and Technology professor Chen Ming-cheng (陳明正) and his former student Chang Tsai-chen (張綵宸).
In 2018, the company signed a NT$11.24 million (US$345,761) contract with the Yilan County Government to conduct safety inspections on bridges in the county, it said.
Photo: Taipei Times
Chen had submitted to the county the information of 11 employees who were qualified to carry out the inspections, as specified in their contractor agreement, it said.
However, due to labor shortages, Chen dispatched 10 other unqualified people to make inspections and falsely reported them as having been carried out by qualified employees in the government’s bridge information management system, it said.
The company submitted falsified data for the inspection of 541 bridges in eight Yilan townships, it said.
As civil engineering doctorate holders, Chen and Chang understood the dangers of sending unqualified people to inspect bridges, it said.
Nevertheless, they chose to do so, endangering public safety, continued to deny any wrongdoing and showed a lack of remorse after being caught, it said.
On those grounds, the court said it found Chen and Chang guilty of forgery and sentenced them to two years, and one year and 10 months in prison, respectively.
The verdict can be appealed.
The Yilan County Transportation Department in a statement said that it has demanded financial compensation from Chen’s company, which it has already replaced with another qualified contractor.
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