Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇) yesterday accused Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member Yang Hui-ju (楊蕙如) of using duplicates of invoices from a tennis tournament in 2017, which her company organized, to unduly secure subsidies for items that the Taipei City Government and the central government had already paid for.
Yang’s company, Yi Shi (易始公司), had acquired subsidies for the 2017 Taiwan Open from the central government, but in 2018 used a copy of the 2017 invoice to obtain subsidies from the Taipei Department of Information and Tourism, Ying told a news conference in Taipei.
Moreover, the 2016 tournament was in Kaohsiung, but the Taipei department gave Yi Shi subsidies for it regardless, Ying said.
Photo: Liu Hsiao-hsin, Taipei Times
The tournament moved to Taipei from 2017.
Later, Ko said that he had “good news” — the Taipei Department of Government Ethics in a report on subsidy requests filed by Yi Shi concluded that the firm had used duplicates of invoices to secure funds for a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tournament that the city government had already issued subsidies for.
Yi Shi requested subsidies from the Taipei City Government and the central government for the tournament, the report said.
Ko said he had signed the report and would forward it to prosecutors.
“Will the central government reveal all the information it has” on subsidies it granted Yi Shi? Ko asked.
“You can bet that it will not release the information before the elections” on Saturday next week, he said.
Sports Administration Director-General Kao Chun-hsung (高俊雄) declined to comment on Ko’s question.
The Sports Administration in 2016 helped pay for the royalties for hosting the WTA event and prize money, but after that only helped with the royalties, Kao said.
The requests that Yi Shi submitted were according to the sports body’s regulations, he said.
“We will respect the Taipei City Government’s decision,” Kao said. “If prosecutors launch an investigation, we will cooperate.”
Additional reporting by staff writer
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