Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), the party’s presidential candidate in this year’s election, yesterday denied that the Control Yuan had in April informed him that his campaign office had filed incomplete donation disclosure reports.
After the Control Yuan published data on parties’ campaign donation income and expenditures, political pundits have raised a series of questions about the figures reported by Ko’s campaign office, sparking speculation that it made false declarations.
The TPP last week admitted having made some errors in its accounting and disclosure process, leading to unreported or misreported items, and said that Tuanmu Cheng (端木正), an accountant contracted to handle Ko’s election campaign financial reporting, was responsible.
Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times
In a news conference on Tuesday last week, the TPP said that in the expenditure records it reviewed so far, it found 15 unreported items totaling NT$18.17 million (US$567,937) and two misreported items.
However, the Control Yuan said the TPP had submitted Ko’s campaign finance report on the online declaration system on April 7, but as it found the data to be incomplete the next morning, it immediately returned the report to the declarant to make corrections, the Chinese-language Mirror Media magazine reported yesterday.
The Control Yuan said that Ko’s election campaign office corrected the report and resubmitted it on July 3, the magazine reported.
The Control Yuan provided six accounts with access to the political donation declaration online system to Ko’s campaign office, but it only used four of them, the report said.
The accounts were used by Ko; Tuanmu, including a man who helped him input the data; the office’s accountant, Ho Ai-ting (何璦廷); and Lee Wen-chuan (李文娟), director of marketing firm Muko (木可行銷公關), which handled events and merchandising for the campaign, the magazine said.
What remains unanswered is why three expenditure records — reported by Ko’s campaign office as payments totaling NT$9.16 million to two marketing companies, which denied having received the money — were submitted after April 15, the deadline to declare campaign donations, and who made the modifications, Mirror Media said.
At a TPP news conference in Taipei yesterday, TPP Legislator Vivian Huang (黃珊珊), who was Ko’s campaign manager, said the report the Control Yuan returned on April 8 only informed the office of “incomplete data,” but did not mention a NT$20 million difference.
She said the campaign office’s financial division contacted the Control Yuan’s contact person, who found that the reported donation income was higher than the amount in its bank account, so the division asked the accountant to check for any unreported items.
The accountant corrected the data up until July 3, and the system has a record of who logged in to make the modifications, she said, adding that the TPP could take legal action against Mirror Media over its reporting.
Meanwhile, the TPP yesterday afternoon held a Central Review Committee meeting to discuss punishing party members involved in the controversy.
After nearly four hours of discussion, the committee decided to suspend Huang for three years, and expel Tuanmu and Lee Wen-tsung (李文宗), chief financial officer for Ko’s presidential campaign, from the party, committee chairman Lee Wei-hwa (李偉華) said.
In other news, Ko’s wife, Peggy Chen (陳佩琪), is to appear at a Taipei City Hospital ethics hearing today over a Facebook post that seemingly suggested that she had contravened rules regulating civil servants.
In a post dated Aug. 6, Chen, who works at the government-run hospital, said she had started a company under her son’s name to avoid regulations barring civil servants from holding two jobs.
Additional reporting by Gan Meng-lin and CNA
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
RSS