The Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office in Kaohsiung has indicted a man on suspicion of recruiting people for sponsored tours to China, during which they were urged to vote for specific presidential candidates next month.
China Pan-Blue Association member Chen Chih-cheng (鄭志成) is the first person to be charged in one of many Chinese election interference cases prosecutors are investigating in the lead-up to the Jan. 13 presidential and legislative elections.
Cheng was charged with contravening the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法), the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法) and the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法).
Photo: Wu Cheng-feng, Taipei Times
From May, Cheng recruited about 140 Taiwanese to visit China on tours mostly paid for by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), prosecutors said.
Each person only needed to pay between NT$10,000 and NT$20,000, and Cheng received NT$2,000 for each person he recruited, they said.
The tour groups met with representatives from the TAO and the Chinese United Front Work Department, who urged them to vote for the “pan-blue camp” and “to remove the Democratic Progressive Party government from office,” prosecutors said.
Photo: CNA
In other election news, Pingtung County Council Speaker Chou Tien-lun (周典論) was yesterday detained on suspicion of buying signatures for Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) to help him get the endorsements needed for to run in the presidential election.
Pingtung County prosecutors said that after receiving a tip-off that Chou had bought signatures for Gou for NT$200 each, they raided Chou’s residence at about 6am on Monday and took him in for questioning.
Suspecting Chou had breached the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act, prosecutors filed a motion to detain him, which the Pingtung District Court approved early yesterday, the Pingtung District Prosecutors’ Office said.
Chou denied buying signatures and said that the funds involved were wages given to staffers to collect signatures, district court judge Wang Yi-chi (王以齊) said.
The judge did not accept Chou’s version of events as many witnesses testified that the fee was used to buy signatures, testimony that was corroborated by evidence, Wang said.
Gou announced his bid to run for president as an independent in late August.
Despite collecting enough signatures, he dropped out of the race and did not register his candidacy by the Nov. 24 deadline.
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