Shuangbei Funeral Fraud Case Investigation and Trial Situation

Cemetery Ranger Suspected of Corruption Reported to the ICAC for Investigation

[Reporter Qian Lizhong/Taipei Report] After Ke Wenzhe resigned as mayor of Taipei, the former city government funeral management office had a series of scandals, from Wang Wenxiu, the deputy director at the time, suspected of extorting bribes, down to the grassroots funeral workers who repeatedly broke the red envelopes and small profits, Relevant cases are still under investigation and trial; the ICAC has received another report that some cemetery patrollers are suspected of covering up the operators and their families, covering the unapproved illegal exhumation and burial, which may involve corruption, and will report to the prosecution to direct the investigation .

Funeral and interment management regulations stipulate that excavation and reburial are not allowed without an excavation permit. Violators may be fined 30,000 to 150,000 yuan; and mountain patrols are the first line of defense for reporting such violations. The duty is to check whether the tombs within the jurisdiction have been illegally excavated or repaired by bone pickers, and administrative penalties will be imposed according to the circumstances after the inspection.

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Illegal interests are huge, clarify whether there is a collective acceptance of red envelopes

The ICAC received a report that the Beishi Funeral Office suspected that there were mountain patrollers colluding with the industry, covering up the violations but not reporting them. Since there are tens of thousands of tombs in Beishi that have not yet been relocated, if they are involved in corruption, the illegal interests are huge. Clarify whether there are disadvantages such as group acceptance of red envelopes.

It is known that there are fifty-five cemeteries under the management of Beishi Funeral Office, and there are still more than 40,000 tombs that have not been relocated. Among them, the name of the tomb was falsely repaired, and the Yangmingshan No. 1 Cemetery was used to cover the disadvantages of illegal bone collection and burial. There are more than 17,500 tombs moved.

There have been similar abuses in the Beishi Funeral Office. In 2015 and 2016, when the patrolmen of the Yangmingshan No. 1 Cemetery were dealing with illegal excavations in the cemetery, they released water on bone pickers, commonly known as "earth dolls". No punishment was imposed; in November last year, the Taipei District Court sentenced the mountain patroller to one year and two months in prison, and the cemetery technician to one year and April in prison for the crime of false publication by civil servants and the crime of seeking profit from the competent affairs.

Prosecutors have recently cracked down on the bad customs of funerals in the Greater Taipei area. There are also grassroots civil servants in the New Taipei City Funeral Management Office who have been investigated by the New Taipei City Prosecutors Office for accepting red envelopes from business operators and funeral families.