Lay judges are to take part in a corruption trial involving a civil servant in New Taipei City who allegedly colluded with businesses suspected of operating inheritance scams to profiteer from property development, the Ministry of Justice said on Friday.
Taipei prosecutors indicted Wang Tzu-yi (王子誼), a clerk at the Household Registration Office of New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店), on charges of contravening the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) and the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) by allegedly taking bribes, leaking classified information and laundering money.
It is the first time that lay judges would adjudicate a corruption case involving a civil servant since the promulgation of the Citizen Judges Act (國民法官法) in August 2020 and its implementation in 2023, the ministry said.
Photo: Taipei Times
Wang allegedly received NT$11.15 million (US$373,545) in bribes over 12 years, using her job’s access to pass on household registration, personal IDs, property deeds, ownership documents and personal seal information to 16 real-estate development firms, the indictment said.
Wang allegedly accessed the information using the local government’s household registration database, checking the inheritance information for registered property owners and passing the information to the real-estate firms, the indictment said.
The real-estate companies would then allegedly use the information to fraudulently claim ownership of the properties through forged wills and property deed transfers, it said.
The Taipei District Court in July last year convicted 44 people in the wider real-estate scam, including Chuan Rong Real Estate Co owner Tsai Shang-yue (蔡尚岳) and attorney Tsai Hung-shen (蔡鴻燊), who received 14-year and 25-year sentences respectively.
Investigators later uncovered the alleged involvement of Wang and others in the scam ring, the ministry said.
The other defendants would be tried in regular courts, it said, adding that their cases were not suitable for lay judges.
The alleged scam operation defrauded 12 people, mostly older people living on their own, for a profit of about NT$149.25 million, the indictment said.
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