Former Tainan City Council Speaker faces 13 years in jail

Taipei, Nov. 1 (CNA) The Tainan District Court sentenced independent former Tainan City Council Speaker Kuo Hsin-liang (郭信良) to 13 years in prison for corruption on Friday, however, the defendant has announced he plans to appeal.

In the Friday's verdict, Kuo was also deprived of civil rights for eight years after being found guilty of violating the Anti-Corruption Act by extorting and receiving NT$13 million (US$406,924) in bribes from an engineering consultancy.

The bribe was shared between Kuo and Kao Chin-chien (高進見), a local borough chief, who received a nine-year prison sentence and was disenfranchised for four years. Kao also received an additional six-month sentence for inciting an individual to commit perjury.

Meanwhile, the court acquitted Liao (廖), the head of the engineering firm from whom Kuo and Kao solicited the bribe, of bribery charges, but confiscated his mobile phone as evidence.

In response to the ruling, 61-year-old Kuo expressed his dissatisfaction in a Facebook post, insisting that he "has never taken a bribe, not even a penny," and vowed to appeal the decision to "defend my innocence."

"I have provided relevant evidence and even an alibi, yet the court has partially considered the testimony of a single individual who is also under investigation for the same case," he wrote.

Kuo and Kao came under suspicion in May 2023 as prosecutors investigated the consultancy for illegally interfering in a land zoning project.

In early July of the same year, Tainan prosecutors interrogated more than 10 individuals in the case and secured permission to detain Kuo for allegedly extorting and receiving over NT$13 million in bribes from the company under the guise of a settlement agreement in 2021.

Kuo was a member of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and served as deputy speaker from 2010 to 2018. He briefly acted as speaker for two months in 2016, before leaving the party in 2018 to successfully run for the speakership as an independent.

After being re-elected to a seventh term on the city council in December 2022, Kuo sought to retain his position but lost to the DPP's Chiu Li-li (邱莉莉), who herself was indicted in March 2023 for allegedly bribing councilors during the speakership election.

Chiu was acquitted in April of this year.