Wed, Aug 21, 2024 page2

• TPP’s Ko denies Control Yuan’s report

  • By Lee I-chia / Staff reporter
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  Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), the party’s presidential candidate in this year’s election, yesterday denied that the Control Yuan had in April informed him that his campaign office had filed incomplete donation disclosure reports.

  After the Control Yuan published data on parties’ campaign donation income and expenditures, political pundits have raised a series of questions about the figures reported by Ko’s campaign office, sparking speculation that it made false declarations.

  The TPP last week admitted having made some errors in its accounting and disclosure process, leading to unreported or misreported items, and said that Tuanmu Cheng (端木正), an accountant contracted to handle Ko’s election campaign financial reporting, was responsible.

  

  Taiwan People’s Party Chairman Ko Wen-je, center, speaks to reporters in front of his residence in Taipei on Sunday.

  Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times

  In a news conference on Tuesday last week, the TPP said that in the expenditure records it reviewed so far, it found 15 unreported items totaling NT$18.17 million (US$567,937) and two misreported items.

  However, the Control Yuan said the TPP had submitted Ko’s campaign finance report on the online declaration system on April 7, but as it found the data to be incomplete the next morning, it immediately returned the report to the declarant to make corrections, the Chinese-language Mirror Media magazine reported yesterday.

  The Control Yuan said that Ko’s election campaign office corrected the report and resubmitted it on July 3, the magazine reported.

  The Control Yuan provided six accounts with access to the political donation declaration online system to Ko’s campaign office, but it only used four of them, the report said.

  The accounts were used by Ko; Tuanmu, including a man who helped him input the data; the office’s accountant, Ho Ai-ting (何璦廷); and Lee Wen-chuan (李文娟), director of marketing firm Muko (木可行銷公關), which handled events and merchandising for the campaign, the magazine said.

  What remains unanswered is why three expenditure records — reported by Ko’s campaign office as payments totaling NT$9.16 million to two marketing companies, which denied having received the money — were submitted after April 15, the deadline to declare campaign donations, and who made the modifications, Mirror Media said.

  At a TPP news conference in Taipei yesterday, TPP Legislator Vivian Huang (黃珊珊), who was Ko’s campaign manager, said the report the Control Yuan returned on April 8 only informed the office of “incomplete data,” but did not mention a NT$20 million difference.

  She said the campaign office’s financial division contacted the Control Yuan’s contact person, who found that the reported donation income was higher than the amount in its bank account, so the division asked the accountant to check for any unreported items.

  The accountant corrected the data up until July 3, and the system has a record of who logged in to make the modifications, she said, adding that the TPP could take legal action against Mirror Media over its reporting.

  Meanwhile, the TPP yesterday afternoon held a Central Review Committee meeting to discuss punishing party members involved in the controversy.

  After nearly four hours of discussion, the committee decided to suspend Huang for three years, and expel Tuanmu and Lee Wen-tsung (李文宗), chief financial officer for Ko’s presidential campaign, from the party, committee chairman Lee Wei-hwa (李偉華) said.

  In other news, Ko’s wife, Peggy Chen (陳佩琪), is to appear at a Taipei City Hospital ethics hearing today over a Facebook post that seemingly suggested that she had contravened rules regulating civil servants.

  In a post dated Aug. 6, Chen, who works at the government-run hospital, said she had started a company under her son’s name to avoid regulations barring civil servants from holding two jobs.

  Additional reporting by Gan Meng-lin and CNA
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