Prosecutors today announced that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Yilan County chapter director Lin Ming-chang (林明昌) and 11 others have been indicted for allegedly forging recall petition signatures.
The Yilan District Prosecutors’ Office first searched the KMT Yilan chapter offices on April 24, and questioned staff over fraudulent petition signatures targeting Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Chun-yu (陳俊宇).
Former chapter secretary-general Yu Ling-chieh (俞凌傑) and general secretary Chen Chien-feng (陳堅豐) were also among those charged, prosecutors said.
Photo: Wang Chun-chi, Taipei Times
Chen Chien-feng and Yu confessed, but did not fully disclose the details of Lin’s participation, prosecutors said.
Lin is out on bail for NT$800,000, while Yu, Chen Chien-feng and Li Tzu-hui (李姿慧) are being held incommunicado.
Prosecutors said they are seeking heavy sentences for Lin, Yu and Chen Chien-fung because of their alleged roles in leading the forgery efforts and concerns that they have colluded and destroyed evidence.
Yu and Chen Chien-feng downloaded the party member list and gave it to workers, who forged the signatures, prosecutors said.
To prevent detection, they instructed the workers to select three to five non-consecutive names per page to copy, with the skipped names later filled in using different colored pens, prosecutors said.
Chen Chien-feng paid each party worker NT$1,000 to NT$1,500 for the task, prosecutors said.
Of the 4,206 names submitted to the Central Election Commission on Feb. 19, 1,106 were forged, prosecutors said, adding that the unused lists were later burned.
Without the fake documents, the recall campaign would not have passed the first stage, they said.
Lee Hui-ling (李惠玲), the recall campaign leader, was unaware of the forgeries, prosecutors said.
Lee and several others have been released on bail ranging from NT$30,000 to NT$200,000.
The group’s effort to undermine the integrity of the recall process infringes on citizens’ constitutional rights, prosecutors said, adding that such behavior should not be tolerated.
Among the others charged, six are grassroots workers who admitted their guilt and were pressured to commit the forgeries, prosecutors said, adding that they would likely recommend more lenient sentences for them.
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
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