A former KMT township chief in Pingtung has lost his appeal against a 20-year prison term for taking bribes on public works contracts, and now owes back money he made from the scheme.

• Fu Min-hsiung, the former head of Zhutian township in Pingtung County, was found guilty of colluding with contractors on school walkway, park, and columbarium projects between 2015 and 2017.
• The High Court branch in Kaohsiung kept the original sentence intact: 20 years in prison, a NT$2 million fine, and eight years stripped of civil rights.
• The court added a new order to claw back NT$1 million in illegal gains from the columbarium job that the first trial had left out.
• A local council staffer who acted as the middleman between Fu and the contractors also kept his two-and-a-half-year sentence.
• After the first verdict Fu called the case politically driven and compared himself to Ko Wen-je; this time he has gone quiet and his family says they have not seen the ruling yet.

Outlook: Fu can still appeal to Taiwan's Supreme Court, but the sentence stands for now.