The Taipei City Police Department yesterday took the lead in the official investigation into the alleged wiretapping of one of independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) offices, and called in one suspect for further questioning.
Staff working at the office had discovered several connectors on the building’s main switchboard connecting to the office after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元), executive director of KMT Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien’s (連勝文) campaign, on Tuesday released a list of Ko’s advisers before the list had been made public by Ko’s office.
According to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, the Daan District (大安) precinct had requested taking the lead in the investigation, which had been approved.
Whether the prosecutors’ office would step in to take the lead in the investigation in the future remains to be seen, the office said.
Internet Gazette Law Paper (法治時報社) president Huang Yueh-hung (黃越宏) yesterday filed a suit against Tsai accusing him of violating Clause 2 of Article 315 of the Criminal Code and Article 104 of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法).
Clause 2 states that recording via audio, photographic, videotape or electromagnetic means without good reason of other’s non-public activities, speeches, talks or the private bodily part is an offense against privacy.
Article 104 of the act states that violators face up to five years in prison for disseminating rumors or spreading falsities by text, picture, audio tape, video tape, speech or any other method to cause a candidate to lose an election.
Huang said information regarding a candidate’s future team or personnel arrangements are secrets of the candidate and are protected under both the Criminal Code and the Constitution.
Tsai should not make such documents public no matter how he obtained them, Huang said.
Huang also said that Tsai’s comments on his Facebook page constituted disseminating false information and attempting to prevent Ko from being elected.
Ko denied accusations by Tsai that he created the suspected bugging incident himself, saying that he supported a thorough investigation.
“Of course I wasn’t behind the suspected telephone tapping. That is just not my style of doing things,” Ko said when questioned on the issue by the media during a campaign event. “I’m leading in the polls; I have no reason to do so.”
“Instead of questioning me, an investigation should start with Tsai, since he was the one who made public the list,” Ko said. “Otherwise, should I be blamed for leaks of other classified information in the past?”
Separately, Lien said he hoped that the police could bring the truth to light before the election and urged voters not to vote for the camp that designed the “electoral deception.”
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