Taipei prosecutors yesterday interrogated People First Party (PFP) Taipei City Councilor Mike Wang's (
"Prosecutors are looking into whether Wang's assistants made false accusations on purpose, and whether Wang was involved in the false allegations," Taipei Prosecutors' Office spokesman Lin Pang-liang (
"If Wang and his assistants made the whole thing up, they would be charged with slander," Lin added.
He said prosecutors would summon Wang to explain his role in the funeral parlor-scam in a short time after they gathered more evidence about the scandal.
Wang's four assistants, Shao Li-da (
Prosecutors yesterday said the four assistants admitted they made the whole thing up, but they insisted that Wang knew nothing about it.
Wang was innocent, they told prosecutors.
Prosecutors said, however, they found some contradictions in their statements. A Chinese-language weekly claimed on Wednesday it had a tape of a conversation between two of Wang's assistants, Hsu and Lu.
The weekly said the tape proved that Wang knew about the whole scam from the beginning.
Prosecutors said they have received the tape from the weekly, and that it might serve as evidence of Wang's involvement in the scandal if it tape was proved to be authentic.
Earlier this month, Wang accused six Taipei restaurants of illegally purchasing rice and other food used to honor the dead from funeral parlors, and then selling the food to unwitting customers.
After the allegation was proved to be false, Wang admitted that the whole story was made up by his assistants, but said that he knew nothing about it until the truth was revealed.
Wang refused to step down after furious business operators in Songjiang and Xinsheng boroughs launched a campaign demanding his resignation and compensation for their financial losses.
Wang's false accusations resulted in serious financial losses for those local businesses. Wang withdrew from PFP after the scandal broke.
Wang was also an ETTV talk show host. He allegedly had made other false stories for his shows.
ETTV canceled the show after the funeral parlor-scam broke. The TV station claimed it was not involved in the scandal.
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