Hsinchu County magistrate acquitted in corruption case

Taipei, July 14 (CNA) Hsinchu County Magistrate Yang Wen-ke (楊文科) was acquitted Monday in a corruption case linked to a residential development in Zhubei, but two former county officials were sentenced to prison for their involvement.

According to the Hsinchu District Court's ruling, Yang was found not guilty due to a lack of evidence linking him to the charges.

The case stemmed from a collapse in the ground at the Zhubei residential development's construction site, operated by Fong Yi Construction Co., on April 3, 2022.

Between June 2022 and April 2023, five more sinkholes opened up on nearby roads, seriously damaging a small truck and a Tesla electric vehicle.

In July 2022, Yang ordered the establishment of a special task force to investigate the causes of the incidents, but, in the months that followed, construction at the site was halted and allowed to resume several times.

In explaining its decision to acquit Yang, the court said the special task force was not a statutory body but only an advisory group for the Public Works Department, which still retained the final discretionary authority over whether construction could resume.

Meanwhile, the court found that the department's then-director, Chiang Liang-yuan (江良淵), and official Huang Yu-ssu (黃彧思) nevertheless had allowed Fong Yi to continue working at the site during a suspension period, resulting in 77 days of illegal construction work.

The court sentenced Chiang to a combined six years and six months in prison and four years of deprivation of civil rights for profiteering under the Anti-Corruption Act and possessing unexplained assets.

Huang was handed a sentence of five years and two months in prison, and he was ordered to be deprived of his civil rights for three years.

The court also ordered the confiscation of NT$14.83 million (US$461,248) in suspicious assets from Chiang, saying that he failed to provide a truthful explanation for the origin of the assets seized, undermining the public servant asset declaration system.

The court argued that Chiang and Huang were expected, as public officials, to uphold the law but instead allowed the construction project to continue, benefiting Fong Yi.

The rulings issued Monday can still be appealed.

The two former officials and Magistrate Yang were indicted by the Hsinchu District Prosecutors Office for alleged contraventions of the Anti-Corruption Act in July 2024.

In its indictment, prosecutors alleged that the construction firm knowingly violated regulations by reducing the length of steel piles necessary to stabilize the ground of a new residential project in order to save over NT$100 million in costs.

In addition, the use of substandard materials by Fong Yi led to several collapses and sinkholes, they said.

Prosecutors had alleged that Yang, despite knowing about the problems and publicly calling for an investigation, accepted the use of a property owned by Fong Yi as his campaign headquarters and other benefits, and instructed Chiang to approve the company's request to resume construction.

In a separate statement Monday, Yang said the court's ruling showed that he and Public Works Department personnel were found not guilty on charges related to the resumption of construction, proving that the process complied with the law, an interpretation seemingly at odds with what the court actually ruled.

Yang said, however, that he found it regrettable that Chiang and Huang were found guilty of profiteering charges, and expressed support for their appeals to defend their innocence.

The Hsinchu prosecutors' office said it would review whether to file an appeal after receiving the full written ruling.