The Supreme Court on Monday upheld lower court verdicts that sentenced two former police officers to at least eight years in jail for demanding or taking bribes from migrant workers who illegally left their jobs to allow them to go free.
The Supreme Court found that the two men, who were with the Taipei Police Department’s Datong Precinct at the time, took cash and gold necklaces from the workers between October 2012 and August 2014 in exchange for not handing them over to the National Immigration Agency.
One of them, Lin Chang-ling (林長玲), took and demanded bribes valued at NT$79,000 from 2012 to 2014 to not report migrant workers six different times, the court found.
Officers Lin Yi-hui (林奕輝) and Tsai Chih-wei (蔡志偉) took bribes totaling NT$33,000 for letting migrant workers go rather than turning them over to immigration authorities on two occasions, according to the court.
The cases were first heard by the Taipei District Court, which in March 2017 sentenced Lin Chang-ling to 10 years in prison, Tsai to nine years and four months, and Lin Yi-hui to 4 years.
Lin Chang-ling’s sentence came after he was found guilty of forced seizure of the worker’s property in addition to demanding and taking bribes, and Tsai’s sentence was based on him not only accepting but demanding bribes.
Following an appeal, the Taiwan High Court in March 2019 upheld the sentences for Lin Chang-ling and Tsai, while reducing the sentence for Lin Yi-hui to 40 months.
The case was then sent to the Supreme Court, which in December 2019 remanded the case to the High Court because of what it described as a lack of evidence showing that Lin Chang-ling had engaged in extortion or forced seizure of the migrants’ property or that Tsai had demanded bribes.
In a retrial in December 2021, the High Court sentenced Lin Chang-ling to 9 years and 2 months in prison after finding him guilty of eight infractions of the Anti-Corruption Act, while Tsai was given 8 years for two violations of the act.
Lin Yi-hui’s sentence was reduced to 24 months and he was granted probation.
According to the High Court’s verdict, Lin Yi-hui received the reduced sentence and probation because he confessed to his wrongdoing and donated NT$1,500 per month to the Taiwan International Workers’ Association between June 2017 and November 2021, which showed he had repented and sought to compensate for his crime.
Lin Chang-ling and Tsai appealed the ruling, resulting in Monday’s Supreme Court verdict.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel