The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) failed to report or misdeclared 17 expenses from its latest presidential election campaign, totaling more than NT$18 million (US$553,931), TPP spokeswoman Vicky Chen (陳智菡) said today.
TPP leaders including Chen and Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) called a news conference this afternoon to explain flaws discovered in its reporting of three payments to publicity firms.
The party’s accountants made a full review of its campaign finance declarations after the discrepancies were discovered, Chen said.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Detailed records of all expenses were kept, but the accounting team failed to report them accurately to the Control Yuan, she said.
The campaign hired accountant Tuanmu Cheng (端木正) to handle the reporting, Chen said, adding that the party had asked him to explain the mistakes uncovered over the past two days.
Quoting from his response, Chen said that the items were left out because they were under a time crunch.
Tuanmu took the liberty to condense the reporting by declaring the shortfalls as payments to the three marketing companies without informing campaign headquarters, Chen said.
Tuanmu did not respond to a request for comment.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS