FOCUS TAIWAN - CNA ENGLISH NEWSToday, 20:31
Taipei, Feb. 13 (CNA) Tainan City is seeking to detain former major shareholders and board members of a company suspected of building Weiguan Jinlong apartment complex (維冠金龍大樓) which collapsed in the magnitude 6.4 earthquake Feb. 6, causing 114 deaths, the city's mayor said Saturday.
"We will request the court to order a provisional attachment that includes the arrests of the now-defunct Weiguan company's former major stockholders and members of its board of directors and supervisors," said Lai Ching-te (賴清德).
An earlier request to detain Lin Ming-hui (林明輝), former chairman of Weiguan company, and architects Chang Kui-pao (張魁寶) and Cheng Chin-kui (鄭進貴), who were responsible for the construction of the building, was granted by Tainan District Court on Feb. 9.
The three developers were detained and held incommunicado on charges of professional negligence resulting in deaths, as jerry-building by the real estate development company is believed to be one of the causes of the collapse.
Lai said his government had the consent of residents of the apartment complex who were not critically injured to request a temporary seizure of NT$3 million in the suspects' assets, a request that had been granted by the court.
Now "we're trying to expand the targets of a provisional attachment to include the former major shareholders and board members of the construction company," Lai added.
The city government has found that Lin holds at least 30 plots of land in Tainan, a municipal city in southern Taiwan.
The 16-story residential building in Tainan's Yongkang District collapsed in the earthquake, killing 114 and wounding 104 in the apartment complex.
A total of 397 people were rescued from the collapsed building, 104 of whom required hospital treatment.
The quake claimed 116 lives, including two in the city's Guiren District who were hit by falling objects.
There is one person still unaccounted for in Tainan since the earthquake, but the police said the individual is a homeless person who is not believed to have been in the Weiguan complex when the disaster hit. The individual is listed as a missing person, police said.
(By Chang Jung-hsiang and S.C. Chang)
ENDIETM/
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rsscna/EngNews/~3/QcOwtVc9peQ/201602130019.aspx
