Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/21
By: Page Tsai and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, April 21 (CNA) A former deputy Taoyuan county magistrate who served

before the county was upgraded to a special municipality, was sentenced to seven years in prison by the Supreme Court Thursday for taking bribes from a land developer in an affordable housing construction project.

Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文) was found guilty of corruption in the court’s final verdict on the case in which Yeh and co-defendant Chao Teng-hsiung (趙藤雄), founder of Farglory Land Development Co., were indicted by prosecutors on charges of corruption in 2014 for their roles in the construction project in Linkou, New Taipei.

Yeh was charged by prosecutors for taking bribes from Chao in exchange for help with the projects while serving as chief of the Construction and Planning Agency under the Ministry of the Interior in 2012.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/20
By: Chen Cheng-wei and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, April 20 (CNA) Costco Wholesale Corp., one of the world’s largest

retailers, won the applause of its Taiwan branch Wednesday after correcting its identification of Taiwan on its online job application site as a province of China.

Costco Taiwan said in a statement that it approved and respected the correction by the company’s headquarters in the United States, which moved Taiwan from the options for “province” to those for “country” in its online job application system.

Such a situation does not exist in Taiwan because the job application system here is different from that in the United States, Costco Taiwan added.

Costco Wholesale was responding to a request made by the Washington D.C.-based Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA), a non-government organization dedicated to promoting Taiwan’s interests in the United States.     [FULL  STORY]

CONTENTIOUS SEARCH:Prosecutors raided Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey’s office looking for evidence relating to the transfer of medication to OBI Pharma

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 21, 2016
By: Jason Pan / Staff reporter

Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) and OBI Pharma Inc (台灣

浩鼎) chairman Michael Chang (張念慈) were yesterday both listed as defendants by prosecutors in a probe into insider trading allegations, while Ruentex Group (潤泰集團) chairman Samuel Yin (尹衍樑) and Wong’s wife were released after being questioned.

Judicial officials intensified their investigation yesterday, conducting raids on Wong’s office at Academia Sinica, the Wong family’s residences and the offices of Ruentex Group-owned China Network Systems Co (中嘉網路), a cable TV service provider.

The raids were headed up by the Taipei Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office and the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau (MJIB), with investigators seizing documents and other evidence at seven locations across the greater Taipei area.

Wong was first summoned for questioning at the MJIB’s Taipei Division Office yesterday afternoon, then taken to the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office in the evening for further questioning.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-04-20
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

The Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) on Wednesday said the Puyuma Express will begin to join the western line services from April 21, travelling daily between Songshan Station in Taipei City and Chaozhou Station in Pintgung County, with only one southbound train and one northbound train a day.

A single trip of the western line Puyuma stops over at 10 stations (including departure and destination) and takes about four hours and 20 minutes, about one hour faster than the Tze-Chian Express, but the fare, NT$ 940, is the same as the latter.

The stopover stations include Taipei, Banqiao, Taoyuan, Taichung, Chiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung.

Currently, the southbound Puyuma, train code 111, departs daily from Songshan at 7:48 a.m. and arrives at Chaozhou at 12:08 p.m.; the northbound Puyuma, train code 136, departs from Chaozhou at 2:58 p.m. and arrives at Songshan at 7:17 p.m.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/20
By: Tai Ya-chen, Hsiao Po-yang and Lilian Wu

Taipei, April 20 (CNA) Premier Simon Chang (張善政) said Wednesday that it

will not be easy to bring back 45 Taiwanese nationals deported to China by Kenya for alleged telecom fraud.

Chang said a delegation has arrived in China to negotiate the matter, and that the Cabinet will give it a “free hand to do as much as possible in the negotiation.”

To get the Taiwanese nationals back from China soon will be one of the topics in the talks, but Chang said it will not be easy to get them back immediately because China also has its own judicial procedure.

On whether it will be possible to bring the suspects back to serve jail terms after the judicial procedures are completed, he said that there are such precedents.

But since the suspects have been taken to China instead of Taiwan in the past, “we cannot be optimistic” that they can be brought back soon.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 20, 2016
By: Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter

The New Power Party (NPP) caucus yesterday proposed amendments to the

Criminal Code to extend the government’s jurisdiction over criminal offenses committed abroad amid alleged international telephone fraud involving Taiwanese overseas, while the party urged China to share evidence to facilitate a joint criminal investigation.

The party plans to revise Article 7 of the Criminal Code, which stipulates that the code applies where Taiwanese commit an offense abroad that is punishable by more than three years in prison.

The party proposed to drop the three-year minimum prison term as a requisite for the code’s application.

“The revision will no longer limit the application of the Criminal Code to serious offenses, but the code would apply where an offense committed abroad is punishable by local laws. That would provide legal grounds for Taiwan to request extradition or international judicial cooperation in cases involving Taiwanese, regardless of the severity of offense,” NPP Legislator Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said. “Criminal investigations can be improved only if judicial jurisdiction can be maintained. Only by doing this can we crack down on telephone fraud rings.”     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-04-19
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Australia detained two Taiwanese suspects of a

telecom fraud ring while Vietnam arrested six Taiwanese nationals in a completely separate investigation, reports said Tuesday.

Previous groups detained in Kenya and Malaysia faced deportation to China, causing a major crisis in cross-straits relations. Taiwan succeeded in persuading Malaysia to send the alleged scammers home, where they were immediately freed on arrival. A delegation headed by the Ministry of Justice is leaving for China on Wednesday to discuss those who were sent to Beijing from Kenya.

The Australian police in Brisbane reportedly uncovered a Taiwanese-led fraud ring last August. Two Taiwanese citizens were accused of keeping up to 19 fellow countrymen in servitude and forcing them to conduct telecom scams against people in China, reports said. After their working visas were suspended, they were allowed to return home last August, but the two ring leaders were still being held, reports said.

In the other case, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Vietnamese authorities detained six Taiwanese and several Vietnamese citizens who defrauded about a dozen people of a total of about NT$8.25 million (US$250,000). The victims were all Vietnamese, reports said, meaning the alleged perpetrators are unlikely to face deportation to China.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan Today
Date: April 19, 2016

Wei Wu Ying Center for the Arts in Kaohsiung City is set for completion in June,

sowing the seeds for the rise of southern Taiwan as a hub of performing arts in Asia.

Designed by internationally renowned Mecanoo Architecten b.v., a Netherlands-based architecture and planning company led by Francine M. J. Houben, the world-class performance center is set to open in 2017. It incorporates flowing lines and blends seamlessly with the many banyan trees dotting the 65-hectare site.

The center boasts 141,000 square meters of floor space, a central theater seating 2,260, a medium-sized auditorium accommodating 1,254, a concert hall for 2,000 and a recital hall holding 470. Other facilities include an outdoor plaza and a rooftop promenade.

During an inspection tour of the NT$10.6 billion (US$327.4 million) project April 17, President Ma Ying-jeou said the center highlights the commitment of the government to vitalizing the southern Taiwan cultural scene, as well as promoting balanced regional development.     [FULL  STORY]