Ten Kaohsiung City councilors will shortly be summoned as prime suspects in connection with alleged bribery surrounding the council's speakership election, the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors' Office said yesterday.
The announcement came after the prosecutors' office banned 28 of the city's 44 councilors from leaving the country late Tuesday.
"These 10 councilors are from different political parties. We will soon summon them to seek clarification and explanations regarding certain questions and allegations against them," said Chou Chang-chin (
The prosecutors' office did not reveal the names of the 28 councilors it banned from leaving the country.
The prosecutors office said that 10 of the 28 had been singled out as prime suspects to be summoned as a matter of priority because Wu Pin-fang (
Wu and Hsien Ji-yu (賢繼禹), the secretary-general of Chu's office and a former Kaohsiung County councilor, were summoned by Prosecutor Hsiao Yu-cheng (蕭宇誠) on Monday. After an overnight interview, Hsiao filed a request to detain both Wu and Hsien on Tuesday.
The Kaohsiung District Court approved the request to detain Hsien, but, after Wu had complied with Hsiao's request that she testify against other suspects in the case, the request to detain her was dropped at around 2am yesterday.
"We tried to approach Wu to get her to tell us more details about the suspected vote-buying case. She agreed to do so and we decided to drop the request to detain her and let her go," Chou said.
"As for Hsien, we believe that he must know something since he worked closely with Chu. But he refused to comment so we decided to detain him for further questioning," he said.
Another group of prosecutors conducted interviews yesterday with DPP Kaohsiung City Council caucus whip Jan Yung-lung (詹永龍) and his wife Jan Wang Po-yun (詹王泊雲), who are both suspected of involvement in the case.
The couple, during separate interviews, told prosecutors that NT$2 million in cash, discovered at their residence by investigators during a search last Friday night, was a political donation from a "high-ranking DPP official." They refused to identify the official.
Chou said that prosecutors are now trying to find a mole at either the prosecutors' office or the detention house because the couple gave the same explanation, despite Jan's being detained in solitary confinement with access only to his lawyer.
"Obviously, we have moles inside the prosecutors' office or the detention house and this person helped them exchange information," Chou said.
Jan has been in detention since last Saturday night, charged with bribery while his wife, whom prosecutors suspect of serving as a liaison between her husband and Chu, was released on NT$200,000 bail. Prosecutors say that neither of them has given a satisfactory explanation for the presence of the cash, which prosecutors believe was a bribe received by Jan.
The offence of bribery covers both the payment and receipt of bribes.
Chu and his wife Wu Te-mei (
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