TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Taiwan High Court upheld the verdict on Tuesday in the case of former KMT Taichung City Councilor Jan Ling-hsuan (冉齡軒), who was convicted of fraudulently claiming assistant fees totaling NT$1.48 million (US$45,539).

Jan was found to have conspired with her husband, Chiu Yu-ming (邱裕明), the operator of a funeral home, to list temporary workers from the funeral home as her assistants. They submitted inflated salary claims to the city council, with Jan requesting assistant wages exceeding the actual pay, per CNA.

Despite some assistants resigning, Jan continued to submit fraudulent claims. These activities took place from 2018 to 2022 before being uncovered by investigators, per UDN and Ettoday.

In the initial trial, Jan was sentenced to four years in prison for corruption. Chiu received a sentence of two years and four months.

After appealing the case, the appeal court upheld the original verdict, maintaining Jan’s four-year sentence and adding a three-year deprivation of civil rights. Chiu’s sentence was increased to three years and eight months, with a two-year deprivation of civil rights.

The Agency Against Corruption discovered that Jan had misused public funds for personal expenses. These included her son’s living costs, payments to a monk from an Yilan temple for spiritual services to remove family impurities and resolve family misfortunes, as well as other personal rituals.

Additionally, she used the funds to pay for household services, such as cleaning her residence’s Buddhist altar, repairing a phone, and altering a skirt. Jan also used the misappropriated funds to cover monthly water bills and repentance fees at a temple.

Jan said the ruling was unjust and plans to appeal the decision. She and her husband continue to deny the corruption charges, asserting that the assistant fees were properly deposited into an account designated for assistant expenses.

They also claimed that the funds used for temple ceremonies came from Jan's personal account, which she had been using since her time as a county councilor.