Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) New Taipei City Branch secretary-general Chen Chen-jung (陳貞容) was released on bail of NT$1 million (US$34,024) late on Tuesday night, after prosecutors indicted 31 people for allegedly forging recall petition signatures.
Prosecutors on Tuesday completed their investigation into recall campaigns targeting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧), Chang Hung-lu (張宏陸) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城), finding 2,566 forged signatures among the petitions.
They indicted Chen and 30 others for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法).
Prosecutors said Chen played a lead role in the alleged fraud.
Although Chen said the KMT’s central headquarters assigned her to oversee the recall effort, she denied any wrongdoing, prosecutors said.
Chen is suspected of paying party personnel to forge signatures in the campaign against Su and playing a role in gathering fraudulent signatures in the campaign against Chang, prosecutors said.
Chen was released with restrictions on her residence, travel and communications.
In related news, Taipei prosecutors are investigating suspected forgeries in the recall campaign targeting DPP New Taipei City Councilor Evalyn Chen (陳乃瑜).
Prosecutors yesterday morning asked the court to detain three people from KMT Legislator Lo Ming-tsai’s (羅明才) Sindian District (新店) office — director Mou Wei-hui (繆維蕙), and aides Lin Tzu-ling (林姿伶) and Liu Shih-chun (劉時郡) — who were held incommunicado.
Four other people were released on bail and two more were released after questioning.
Prosecutors launched an investigation after Internet personality Liu Yu (劉宇), also known as Si Cha-mao (四叉貓), in March said that the petitions in the campaign targeting Evalyn Chen had an unusually high “mortality rate,” as 2.7 percent of those who had signed them had passed away.
After requesting records from the Central Election Commission (CEC) and analyzing individual signatures and handwriting, prosecutors found that some signatures were faked.
Separately, the KMT yesterday urged the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office to investigate five groups heading recall campaigns against the party’s legislators, alleging that the groups had forged signatures in recall petitions.
The CEC on Friday last week announced that recall campaigns against 24 KMT legislators were approved and that a vote was scheduled for July 26.
However, KMT Legislator Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍) yesterday said that thousands of signatures were repeated across phase 1 and phase 2 of the recall process targeting KMT legislators Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯), Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇), Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強), Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) and Lee Yan-hsiu (李彥秀) of Taipei.
Chen Yu-chen said that according to the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), signatories in the first phase cannot also be used in the second phase.
The KMT urges prosecutors to investigate the groups, as it had against groups that campaigned for the recall of DPP legislators, she said.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said that they are already investigating a case of alleged signature fraud in petitions against Wang, and the office has summoned persons of interest for questioning.
The office said it has also received a complaint from KMT Legislator You Hao (游顥) about suspected signature fraud, adding that it forwarded the incident to the Nantou County Prosecutors’ Office as it was outside its jurisdiction.
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