A Taipei city parks worker has been charged with stealing public money to pay for personal shopping and dates, and his case will be the first corruption trial in the district heard with citizen judges.

• A contract engineering assistant handling park utility bills took NT$312,000 from an office safe over two months.
• He first used his own key to take NT$150,000, repaid it after being caught, then tricked a colleague into handing over another NT$162,000.
• Unable to repay the second amount, he confessed and turned himself in to the anti-corruption agency.
• A section chief who found the first theft but did not report it was given deferred prosecution and must pay NT$80,000 to the treasury.
• Because embezzling public property carries a minimum ten-year sentence, the case automatically goes before a mixed panel of judges and lay citizens.

Outlook: The trial will be closely watched as an early test of Taiwan's citizen judge system in corruption cases.