The Miaoli District Court yesterday found a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) township mayor guilty of buying votes in last year’s local elections.
The court annulled the election results for Tongluo Township (銅鑼), which means its mayor, Li Rui-ting (李瑞廷), 63, would lose his office.
It also found Li’s campaign manager, Tseng Yi-hsiao (曾義孝), guilty of vote-buying.
Photo from the Tongluo Township Office Web site
It was the first ruling in the case and can be appealed.
Li had won the election with 5,668 votes against independent candidate Hsieh Chang-nien’s (謝昌年) 4,996 votes.
However, residents reported receiving cash from a vote broker during campaigning, prompting Miaoli prosecutors to investigate the allegation.
After collecting evidence, the prosecutors indicted Li and Tseng on vote-buying charges.
Hsieh also filed a judicial complaint to annul the election results, saying he had evidence of Li’s campaign team buying votes
Investigators found that in October last year, Tseng handed over cash to a vote broker in the township with instructions to distribute NT$3,000 (US$96) each to four households in a village in exchange for their votes.
During questioning, the vote broker provided evidence of Tseng giving him the money and had records of numerous telephone calls he had with Tseng in the days leading up to the election.
During trial, Li said that Tseng was not part of his campaign team and was not connected to the vote-buying scheme, but witnesses testified that Tseng was involved in the campaign.
The judges cited Tseng’s role as campaign manager, saying that he would have received instruction and approval from Li to act, so Li was also responsible for buying votes in contravention of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法).
After hearing the verdict, Li reiterated that Tseng did not work for his campaign and vowed to appeal the ruling.
Separately, Kaohsiung City Councilor Cheng An-li (鄭安秝) of the KMT was released after posting NT$300,000 bail in connection with a corruption probe.
The Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office on Tuesday ordered investigators and police officers to raid six locations, including Cheng’s residence and office, and summoned 12 people, including two witnesses, for questioning.
Cheng, 24, allegedly forged documents to pocket money from the funds earmarked for paying wages and subsidies to office assistants, Kaohsiung prosecutor Lin Heng-tsui (林恒翠) said.
Cheng’s office director, surnamed Wang (王), was detained yesterday after prosecutors accused the two of colluding to falsify numbers to steal more than NT$2 million.
Prosecutors said they would charge Cheng and Wang with forgery and contraventions of the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例).
Investigators are still examining the materials seized from Cheng’s office, they said.
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