KMT Kaohsiung councilor loses seat over assistant fee fraud

Taipei, June 24 (CNA) Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Shao-ting (黃紹庭) will be removed from office and barred from November's local elections after the Supreme Court upheld his conviction for assistant fee fraud on Wednesday.

The Kuomintang (KMT) politician was convicted of illegally pocketing NT$14.55 million (US$458,325) by listing dummy assistants and inflating their salaries since first taking office in 2014.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Huang's appeal of a Taiwan High Court ruling in January that sentenced him to two years in prison, with the sentence suspended for five years, and stripped him of his civil rights for three years.

According to the Kaohsiung City Council, the Executive Yuan will remove Huang from office after receiving the written judgment. The removal will take effect retroactively from Wednesday and will prevent him from running in the Nov. 28 local elections.

In 2024, the Kaohsiung District Court sentenced Huang to two years in prison, suspended for five years, after taking into account that he had confessed to the crime and returned the illicit gains. The court also ordered him to complete 240 hours of community service and pay NT$1.5 million to the national treasury.

The Taiwan High Court later increased the financial penalty to NT$2 million while upholding the rest of the sentence, prompting Huang's final appeal to the Supreme Court.