A Taipei court has handed prison terms to five people over the 2023 building collapse that wrecked 25 neighboring homes, a win for the residents who were forced out.

• The site manager got 4 years and 10 months for violating building rules and forging documents; four others got sentences from 8 months to 2 years 8 months.
• To speed up the job, the crew built the underground retaining wall 10 centimeters thinner than the plans required and did the ground work out of order.
• When neighboring homes started cracking months before the collapse, the managers had monitoring data altered to hide the damage and kept building past alarm levels.
• The architect supervising the job and an engineer signed off on inspection papers without ever visiting the site, turning the safety checks into a rubber stamp.
• Prosecutors said the two main defendants never admitted wrongdoing and asked for heavier punishment; the verdicts can still be appealed.

Outlook: Appeals are likely, and the case adds pressure on Taipei regulators to tighten oversight of construction near existing homes.