Lawmaker’s Aide Skips Bail
REPORTER:
An aide for independent lawmaker Kao Chin Su-mei has skipped bail while awaiting trial.
The Taipei District Court has issued an arrest warrant for an aide of independent Legislator May Chin after he jumped bail on Sunday.
Judicial police had responded late on Sunday after an electronic wrist monitor belonging to Chang Chun-chieh, Chin’s former legislative office director, issued a low-battery alert, the court said in a statement yesterday.
Police responding to the alert were unable to locate Chang, but recovered his wrist monitor, which had been broken and thrown away, the court said.
After notifying immigration authorities, the court issued an arrest warrant for Chang.
Chin, Chang and 22 others were indicted on June 8 on corruption and fraud-related charges related to the embezzlement of public funds and the importation of unapproved COVID-19 test kits from China.
Chin, who has denied wrongdoing, was accused of obtaining more than NT$7.87 million (US$249,430) in public funds through fraudulent claims for legislative assistants’ salaries, bonuses, overtime pay and childcare subsidies. This included registering several people, including Chin’s siblings, as legislative assistants, but they did not perform any duties, prosecutors alleged.
Chang was accused of conspiring with Chin to fraudulently obtain funds earmarked for assistants’ salaries, as well as using an indigenous cultural association to fraudulently obtain more than NT$9.33 million from government agencies and state-owned enterprises.
Prosecutors said that during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022, Chin also authorized Chang to enlist others to illegally import 74,400 unapproved rapid test kits from China, circumventing medical device regulations.
Chin said the rapid test kits were intended to help indigenous communities amid a shortage of the devices in Taiwan.
In the indictment, prosecutors recommended a sentence of at least 16 years for Chang and 12-and-a-half years for Chin.
Chang, who had been detained and held incommunicado for nearly four months before his indictment, was released on NT$10 million bail in June.
At the time, Chang’s lawyers sought his release on health grounds, saying he was more than 70 years old and battling lung cancer.
During the first day of his trial on Tuesday last week, Chang denied the corruption charges, but admitted to other offenses, such as document forgery. He said that he was not just a legislative aide in name, but had performed his duties and had no criminal intent.
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