Taichung prosecutors yesterday detained four vote captains for Chen Yung-yuan (
Chen's wife, Chung Man (鐘滿), sister Chen Shu-hua (陳淑華), brother-in-law Yang Shu-tung (楊旭東) and friend Wang Tsai-chang (王在璋) were arrested late Friday night, as were two other friends of Chen, Chung Shun-sheng (鐘順盛) and Wu Chi-chia (吳志嘉). They were each arrested separately at either their homes or offices, where investigators found tea and coffee presses that they allege were to be given away to voters as bribes.
Chung Man, Chen Shu-hua, Yang and Wang were detained after being interviewed by prosecutors.
Chung Shun-sheng and Wu were released on bail of NT$20,000 and NT$10,000, respectively, with the condition that they remain in Taichung.
A tea or coffee press is a jug-like vessel with a lid incorporating a push-down mechanism for confining coffee granules or tea leaves to its bottom for the purpose of brewing tea or coffee.
"We received corroborated information from informants saying that Chen asked his wife, his sister, his brother-in-law and his friends to help him distribute these tea presses to voters as gifts and to ask for the voters' support for his campaign," said Tu Ta-jan (
"Prosecutors Lee Bin (李斌), Yang Wen-kuang (楊文廣) and Chen Sung-chi (陳松吉) and police officers from Taichung City Police Headquarters were divided into six teams to raid, with search warrants, six different locations -- the vote-captains' residences or offices in Taichung City.
As well as the tea presses, which were wrapped and ready to be given away, they also found lists of voters in Taichung City's northern constituency.
"None of them admitted to prosecutors that they were trying to buy votes," Tu said.
"But after their interviews we decided to detain Chen's wife, his sister, his brother-in-law and his friend, Wang, for further questioning. As for the other two vote-captains, Chung Shun-sheng and Wu, we decided to release them on bail on condition that they remain available for potential summons since we concluded that they were not major players in this vote-buying case."
"Currently, we are also trying to contact Chen to ask him to give his side of the story," he said.
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