Ann Kao (高虹安) said she would return to her office today as Hsinchu mayor after applying to be reinstated in her job after a High Court ruling on Tuesday acquitted her of corruption charges, although she was found guilty of forgery.
Following the ruling, the Hsinchu City Government filed an application for her to be reinstated with the Ministry of the Interior and received the ministry’s approval yesterday.
Kao told reporters she was looking forward to returning to work at the mayoral office to fulfill her promises to city residents and implement the policies in her election platform.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
Meanwhile, legal experts and politicians urged public prosecutors to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, citing double standards, wrongful application of the law and political consideration by the presiding judge.
“The High Court judge clearly sought to absolve Kao of criminal offenses on corruption and embezzling funds for office staffers. This ruling is contrary to past decisions in similar corruption cases, including at the Supreme Court and in lower-level courts,” Taiwan Forever Association deputy director Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎) said.
He cited the case of former DPP Taipei city councilor Tung Chung-yen (童仲彥), who was convicted of corruption for misappropriating NT$50,000 (US$1,679 at the current exchange rate) of state subsidies to pay for an office assistant. The High Court imposed a jail sentence in a second ruling in 2020. Tung was released on parole in October 2023.
High Court Judge Kuo Yu-chen (郭豫珍) presided over both Kao’s and Tung’s cases, Huang said.
“The ruling on Kao did not cite the same legal violations. It is evidently double standards by Judge Kuo to treat Kao’s case leniently,” Huang said.
The Taipei District Court in July last year convicted Kao of contravening the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) and the Criminal Code, on evidence of forgery, recording inflated assistant salaries and overtime pay claims, and obtaining NT$116,514 in illicit gains.
It handed her a seven-year and four-month prison sentence and resulting in the suspension from her job as mayor.
However, the High Court on Tuesday overturned the corruption conviction and only found her guilty of the charge of causing public officials to make false entries in official records, handing her a six-month jail term which can be commuted to a fine.
Huang said the ruling has stirred public anger, as the presiding judge has legitimized corruption and the illegal pocketing of public funds by elected officials, despite the evidence and testimony of office staffers of Kao misappropriating state funds for assistant wages and producing forged overtime pay claims to claim state subsidies for her personal use.
Pointing to Tung’s case, he asked how the two rulings could be so different.
Tung yesterday also spoke about the similarity of the two cases, accusing the judge of bias and making rulings based on political considerations.
Separately, DPP Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) yesterday accused Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of providing a misleading explanation about state funds being used to pay for expenses and staffers’ wages when the information was requested by the High Court during Kao’s trial.
“The state funds are listed as fiscal budget items for paying the wages of personnel and the various expenses of legislative offices, but Han distorted that by saying that state subsidies are listed as ‘subsidies for legislators themselves,’ whereby each legislator can spend the funds on whatever they decide as appropriate. That led to Kao’s acquittal,” Wang said.
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
Quarantine awareness posters at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport have gone viral for their use of wordplay. Issued by the airport branch of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency, the posters feature sniffer dogs making a range of facial expressions, paired with advisory messages built around homophones. “We update the messages for holidays and campaign needs, periodically refreshing materials to attract people’s attention,” quarantine officials said. “The aim is to use the dogs’ appeal to draw focus to quarantine regulations.” A Japanese traveler visiting Taiwan has posted a photo on X of a poster showing a quarantine dog with a
RSS