Prosecutors have ruled out the possibility that independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) campaign team staged an alleged case of wiretapping, sources from the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday.
Prosecutors reached the conclusion after a meeting was held yesterday between Peng Sheng-shao (彭盛韶), an assistant at Ko’s campaign office, and private detective Lin Chun-hung (林俊宏), who was called in by Ko’s team to sweep the office for recording devices earlier this month, sources said.
The latest development came after Ko’s campaign team on Tuesday, in a bid to refute accusations that it had staged the alleged wiretapping of the office, made public the communications Peng had with Lin.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元), director of KMT Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien’s (連勝文) campaign, gave information pertaining to Ko’s schedule, policies and a list of his advisers to reporters last month, Ko’s camp suspected its campaign office had been bugged. The team reported the case to police on Nov. 4 when a suspicious wire was found in the telephone switchboard room which could have been used to tap the telephone lines.
Lin, who along with private detective Wu Te-yi (吳德義) was called in by Peng to carry out a sweep of the office that day, later reportedly told prosecutors that he planted the wire because he found out that the building did not have any surveillance cameras and he thought the wire would highlight the security deficiency to residents of the building and win him a contract to install cameras.
Sources from the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said that both Wu and Peng would be cleared of all charges, while Lin would be charged with fraud and breach of trust.
Aside from Peng, Wu and Lin, Ko’s head campaign adviser Chang Ching-sen (張景森) was also summoned by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning regarding the case.
After about two hours of cross-examination by prosecutors, the four were allowed to leave.
Chang had requested earlier this week the opportunity to provide an account of the incident to prosecutors.
Later yesterday, he said that while he was waiting to speak with prosecutors, Lin had apologized to him for causing the controversy.
In related developments, Tsai said he would sue Hit FM radio host Clara Chou (周玉蔻) and the station after Chou said that he was the key figure in the alleged wiretapping case.
During an interview with Ko yesterday morning, Chou said she heard from her friends that Lin could have been bought off to make the statement that he planted the wire to tap the telephone lines of Ko’s campaign office.
Chou said it could have been Tsai who bribed Lin.
By offering Lin a sum of money to make the statement, Tsai could then accuse Ko’s camp of staging the wiretapping incident to frame the Lien campaign team, Chou said.
Later yesterday, Chou said she had learned about Tsai’s alleged role in the case from Wu Tsu-chia (吳子嘉), a political commentator who runs the my-formosa.com news Web site.
Separately, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) questioned whether there had been politically motivated interference in the prosecutors’ investigation of the suspected wiretapping case.
DPP spokesperson Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎) raised the question after the Chinese-language Next Magazine reported yesterday that Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office Chief Prosecutor Yang Chih-yu (楊治宇) directly intervened in the investigation to have charges brought against Peng.
The report was referring to prosecutors’ questioning of Peng on Saturday, initially as a witness, but later in the day as a defendant, despite prosecutors having found no evidence that proved Peng was involved in the alleged wiretapping.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan and Loa Iok-sin
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
RSS