corruption case

The Taipei District Court has issued an arrest warrant for Kao Chin Su-mei's
former legislative office director after he jumped bail.

Police were alerted at the weekend after Chang Chun-chieh's electronic wrist
monitor issued a low-battery alert.

They subsequently recovered his wrist monitor, which had been "broken and
thrown away."

Chang was indicted along with Kao Chin and 22 other people in early June on
charges of corruption and fraud-related charges related to the embezzlement
of public funds and the importation of unapproved COVID-19 test kits from
China.

Kao Chin has denied wrongdoing.

But she has also been accused of fraudulently obtaining more than 7.8-million
N-T in public funds through fraudulent claims for legislative assistant
salaries, bonuses, overtime pay and childcare subsidies.

Chang was accused of conspiring with Kao Chin to fraudulently obtain
assistant salaries, as well as using an Indigenous cultural association to
fraudulently obtain over 9-million N-T from government agencies and
state-owned enterprises.

He was then released on 10-million N-T bail in June - after lawyers sought
his release on health grounds, noting that he was over 70 years old and had
lung cancer.