Independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) campaign team yesterday made public the communications it had with a private detective commissioned by the team to investigate the alleged wiretapping of Ko’s campaign office in a bid to refute accusations that the incident had been staged.
The text messages between Peng Sheng-shao (彭盛韶), an assistant at Ko’s campaign office, and Wu Te-yi (吳德義), who runs a private detective agency, from Nov. 3 to Nov. 7 were made public at a press conference in Taipei yesterday.
After private detective Lin Chun-hung (林俊宏), who was asked by Wu to help with the probe, reportedly told prosecutors that he planted the wire found in the building on Nov. 4, which led the campaign team to corroborate its earlier suspicion that the office’s telephone lines had been tapped, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元), who is executive campaign director for KMT Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文), accused Ko’s team of orchestrating the alleged wiretapping incident to frame Lien’s campaign team.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Lin reportedly said he wanted to highlight security deficiencies at the building to win a contract to install surveillance cameras.
Ko’s executive campaign director Yao Li-ming (姚立明) yesterday said that, by disclosing all the text messages between Peng and Wu, the camp wanted to refute the accusations that it was behind the alleged wiretapping incident and that Peng had colluded with Wu to fabricate a statement.
Yao said the text messages show that Peng did not know Wu and Lin before he was assigned by Ko’s head campaign adviser, Chang Ching-sen (張景森), on Nov. 1 to contact a private detective agency to determine whether the office was bugged.
Chang issued the directive at the time because the campaign team had been wondering how Tsai was able to give reporters details of discussions which took place in meetings held in the office.
Peng said that he first contacted Wu on Nov. 3 after Wang Lung-kuan (王龍寬), a lawyer and his longtime friend, gave him his telephone number the same day, dismissing reports that he had been in contact with Wu since late last month.
As the text messages showed, Peng said he did not tell Wu before or after he checked the building that it was being used by Ko’s team.
A text message showed that Peng asked Wu to give him his bank account details because Peng wanted to compensate him for losses caused to his businesses.
Lien’s campaign office later yesterday issued a statement saying Peng’s words were not convincing.
“Since the Ko camp staged the wiretapping incident, the text message records could have been falsified [as well],” Tsai said.
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