The Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau is investigating 33 cases of alleged Chinese funding to candidate campaigns for the Nov. 24 elections, bureau Director-General Leu Wen-jong (呂文忠) said yesterday.
Asked by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus deputy secretary-general William Tseng (曾銘宗) during a meeting of the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee whether the suspect funds were coming directly from the Chinese government or affiliated organizations, Leu said: “You could say that.”
Many of the cases involved donations made through Taiwanese businesses in China, Leu said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
When Tseng asked if any of the donations could have simply been made by those businesses, without Chinese help, Leu said the bureau has evidence that China is attempting to influence the elections by funding certain candidates and is preparing cases for prosecution.
If Taiwanese businesses were making the donations on their own, they would be legal, but the Political Donations Act (政治獻金法) and the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) prohibit donations made by Chinese individuals or entities, Leu said.
China has been attempting to circumvent these laws by making donations in other ways, such as through China-based Taiwanese businesses, with the money coming from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, he said.
Four cases that are being investigated by prosecutors in Taipei and Changhua, Yunlin and Pingtung counties are being treated as alleged vote-buying, the bureau said.
Leu said Beijing had also invited some influential community leaders to visit China on all-expenses-paid trips in return for their backing of China’s favored candidates, but he would not give more details when pressed by committee members.
The bureau has identified certain candidates it believes are being funded by Beijing and it is building cases against them, he added.
The Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office has conducted raids on two underground money exchanges, he said.
The raids were part of preparations for next month’s meeting of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering and aimed at cracking down on campaign violations, as some money meant to influence the elections has been flowing into the exchanges from China, he said.
Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) told the committee that the council was already looking into the cases, but needed more specific information from the bureau.
Meanwhile, Minister of Justice Tsai Ching-hsiang (蔡清祥) called on the police to step up measures against foreign interference in next month’s elections.
Additional reporting by CNA
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