For the past few weeks, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and its Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) have been embroiled in a series of scandals related to irregularities in their presidential campaign financial reporting. These scandals continue to expand as more evidence surfaces, raising more questions about the party’s financial propriety and competency.
These irregularities include unusually high spending, allegedly accepting donations from abroad, reporting 97.3 percent of personal donations as “cash,” making large payments to marketing firms with close ties to the party and accounting errors.
When the financial irregularities were first reported, the party blamed it on “arbitrary misconduct” by their accountant Tuanmu Cheng (端木正). However, later they blamed their chief financial officer Lee Wen-tsung (李文宗) for mismanagement. The two were expelled from the party on Tuesday last week.
TPP Legislator Vivian Huang (黃珊珊), Ko’s campaign manager, was also blamed by some party members for her poor supervision.
Huang called the irregularities in their financial reporting “unimaginable errors,” but she was only suspended from her party positions and is now tasked with dealing with the aftermath.
Throughout the crisis, Ko has denied knowing anything about the seriously flawed financial records, despite the Control Yuan having confirmed that it received Ko’s campaign financial report on April 7 and returned it the next day due to an obvious discrepancy.
Ko did not apologize until Friday, and only said he should not have “trusted a classmate who I have known for 50 years,” using Lee, who was Ko’s high-school classmate, to deflect any responsibility.
However, while Ko has used Tuanmu, Lee and Huang to insulate his reputation from the financial disclosure scandals, his wife, Peggy Chen (陳佩琪), unwittingly added fuel to the political firestorm.
On Facebook, Chen said she registered a company in her son’s name to open a coffee shop for the “little grasses” (小草, Ko’s younger supporters). However, after Ko said they only gave their son money to register his own business, Chen later deleted the Facebook post and changed her statement to align it with Ko’s.
To make matters worse, local Chinese-language media reported on Tuesday that Chen recently visited, with a view to possibly buying, a NT$120 million (US$3.75 million) luxury apartment in Taipei, leading to speculation about how the family could afford it.
At a time when the TPP is facing intense scrutiny over its opaque financial dealings, accusations of mismanagement, and allegations about false reporting and fraud, the visit did not help Ko in his efforts to project a clean image to the public.
As the central bank stipulates that banks can only grant a maximum mortgage of 40 percent of the total price for luxury housing units (above NT$80 million in Taipei), Ko would need to have more than NT$70 to be able to afford the apartment Chen visited. However, Ko’s personal financial disclosure report last year showed the couple had only about NT$24.6 million in savings.
Ko has often said that he lacks funding, and was forced to put his home up for collateral to secure a NT$20 million loan to fund his 2018 mayoral re-election.
He has also called for “housing justice” to win support from young people.
Many pundits have said that Chen’s luxury apartment search might damage Ko’s reputation more than the scandals, as it contradicts the image he presents to the public and the values he claims to hold.
They say that it would be more deeply felt by his younger supporters, who are likely struggling to buy a home for themselves and might now be wondering where their donations to the TPP ended up.
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