The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday said the “KP Show” concert it held on July 29 last year was a commercial activity, following a political pundit’s questioning why earnings from the “fundraising” concert was not declared in the party’s political donation disclosure.
Citing the Control Yuan’s open data on political donations, political pundits and a city councilor last week questioned the TPP and its Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who was also the party’s presidential candidate in the Jan. 13 election, about allegations of inaccurate disclosure of political donations.
Political pundit Kang Jen-chun (康仁俊) on Saturday afternoon in a post on Threads said that Ko last year said he needed money to run for president and he would organize a fundraising event.
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan People’s Party
The KP Show was organized by the marketing company Muko (木可行銷公關), and commissioned to Neo Creative Marketing Production Co (尼奧創意行銷) for execution, which received NT$3,140,802 (US$96,819) for planning and holding the concert, he said.
Internet personality Liu Yu (劉宇), also known as Si Cha-mao (四叉貓), and political pundit Grace Woo (吳靜怡) last week questioned Muko’s allegedly opaque financial dealings with Ko’s campaign office.
They reported a woman surnamed Lee (李) from Muko was in charge. She is also the finance officer of Ko’s election campaign office, and her brother is Ko’s senior-high school classmate and former Taipei Rapid Transit Co chairman Lee Wen-tsung (李文宗), recruited by Ko when he was Taipei mayor.
The KP Show concert sold tickets for NT$8,800 for adults, NT$4,200 for people with disabilities, and online tickets for NT$500, and collected NT$5,310,400 from ticket sales, Liu wrote in his thread post.
Deducting the execution fee and other promotional fees, Muko made a net profit of NT$770,196, he said.
When reporters asked him why the tickets were so expensive last year, Ko replied that the concert was for “fundraising,” so he should explain where the NT$770,196 income had gone, Liu said.
TPP spokesperson Wu Yi-hsuan (吳怡萱) in a prerecorded video said that the concert was not for fundraising, but a pure commercial activity, which Ko’s campaign office had clarified before the election.
She said the concert was organized by Muko, which paid the expenses and collected the revenues, which was all done according to contract.
Meanwhile, the TPP on Saturday apologized for three records of political donation expenditure — one to OCT Entertainment Co (時樂) and two to Neo Creative — as it said that they were mistakes in accounting.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Chung Hsiao-ping (鍾小平) yesterday said he was approached by OCT Entertainment, which said that it did not receive the receipt of about NT$9 million expenditure from Ko’s campaign office and suspected the office of using fake receipts.
Chung said he would head to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office today to file a complaint against Ko for alleged violation of the Political Donations Act (政治獻金法), breach of trust and causing a civil servant to make a false entry in public records.
Additional reporting by CNA
Taiwanese scientists have engineered plants that can capture about 50 percent more carbon dioxide and produce more than twice as many seeds as unmodified plants, a breakthrough they hope could one day help mitigate global warming and grow more food staples such as rice. If applied to major food crops, the new system could cut carbon emissions and raise yields “without additional equipment or labor costs,” Academia Sinica researcher and lead author the study Lu Kuan-jen (呂冠箴) said. Academia Sinica president James Liao (廖俊智) said that as humans emit 9.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide compared with the 220 billion tonnes absorbed
The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Wanda-Zhonghe Line is 81.7 percent complete, with public opening targeted for the end of 2027, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said today. Surrounding roads are to be open to the public by the end of next year, Hou said during an inspection of construction progress. The 9.5km line, featuring nine underground stations and one depot, is expected to connect Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station to Chukuang Station in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和). All 18 tunnels for the line are complete, while the main structures of the stations and depot are mostly finished, he
Taipei is to implement widespread road closures around Taipei 101 on Friday to make way for large crowds during the Double Ten National Day celebration, the Taipei Department of Transportation said. A four-minute fireworks display is to be launched from the skyscraper, along with a performance by 500 drones flying in formation above the nearby Nanshan A21 site, starting at 10pm. Vehicle restrictions would occur in phases, they said. From 5pm to 9pm, inner lanes of Songshou Road between Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101 are to be closed, with only the outer lanes remaining open. Between 9pm and 9:40pm, the section is
China’s plan to deploy a new hypersonic ballistic missile at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) base near Taiwan likely targets US airbases and ships in the western Pacific, but it would also present new threats to Taiwan, defense experts said. The New York Times — citing a US Department of Defense report from last year on China’s military power — on Monday reported in an article titled “The missiles threatening Taiwan” that China has stockpiled 3,500 missiles, 1.5 times more than four years earlier. Although it is unclear how many of those missiles were targeting Taiwan, the newspaper reported
RSS