The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday apologized for mistakes it made when declaring political donations it received during the presidential election campaign from late last year to early this year.
The party and its Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who was the party’s presidential candidate, have in the past week been questioned by political pundits about alleged false declarations regarding political donations it received during its presidential election campaign.
The party apologized for what it said had been mistakes made during accounting, adding that it would conduct a full check of the inventory data again and resubmit the correct data to the Control Yuan, in accordance with the regulations.
Photo: Taipei Times file
The speculation by pundits was based on the Control Yuan’s open data on political donations, with one pundit questioning why more than NT$10 million (US$324,400) labeled as “licensing fees” were transferred to a public relations firm, the head of which was a financial officer for Ko’s election campaign.
OCT Entertainment Co (時樂) on Friday issued a statement saying that the TPP’s political donations declaration data show that the party paid NT$5 million to the company for promotional advertisement services on Dec. 20 last year, but the company did not carry out these services.
Following the statement, political pundit Kang Jen-chun (康仁俊) said Neo Creative Marketing Production Co (尼奧創意行銷) found that the TPP declared it paid about NT$2.16 million on Dec. 20 last year and NT$2 million on Jan. 15 to the company, which the company did not receive.
The TPP in a statement yesterday said that the three records — the NT$5 million promotional fee to OCT Entertainment Co on Dec. 20 last year, the NT$2,164,111 expense on Dec. 20 last year and the NT$2 million expense on Jan. 15 to Neo Creative Marketing Production Co — were mistakes made during accounting, and that it would correct the information as soon as possible.
It said Ko’s presidential election campaign donation account received nearly 180,000 small donations, and it had taken a lot of accounting manpower and time to make an inventory of the donations and examine them.
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