The High Court today overturned a lower court’s acquittal of two people who were accused of accepting Chinese funds to organize trips to China to buy votes.
Yao Wei-hua (姚韋華), a borough warden in New Taipei City’s Tucheng District (土城), was sentenced to two years and six months in prison and Chien An-shih (簡安仕), chairman of an association promoting exchanges with China, was sentenced to four years and eight months. Both were also stripped of their civil rights for two years.
The ruling can be appealed.
Photo: Yang Kuo-wen, Taipei Times
The two men were accused of accepting funding from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) in Nanjing in September 2023.
Chien allegedly instructed Yao to invite five borough wardens and nine relatives and friends to China in November that year.
While the meals and accommodation were covered during the trip, participants paid NT$16,500 each for airfare, prosecutors said.
During banquets, while a red banner reading “one close family on both sides of the Taiwan Strait” was displayed, Yao allegedly said that “this meal is [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s (習近平) treat,” prosecutors said.
TAO officials promoted concepts such as “cooperation between the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] and Taiwan People’s Party,” “support [New Taipei City Mayor] Hou You-yi (侯友宜)” and “do not support the separatist Democratic Progressive Party,” in an alleged attempt to sway the presidential and legislative elections, prosecutors said.
The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office in 2024 indicted the two men on suspicion of contravening the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法), the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) and the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法).
People who attended the trip, including the borough wardens, were not prosecuted.
In the first trial, the New Taipei District Court ruled that the evidence presented by prosecutors was insufficient to prove that the free hospitality was intended to bribe people or influence their voting behavior.
Prosecutors appealed the acquittal and the case was sent to the High Court.
During the trial, Yao asked the High Court to reject the prosecutors’ appeal.
He denied seeing the red banner, and said that he hates politics and would not attempt to sway any elections as he had never voted in a presidential election.
“I only went to have fun and had no clue about who was going,” he said.
The High Court found the pair guilty of vote-buying by accepting funding from an infiltration source.
Additional reporting by Yang Hsin-hui
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