TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmaker and Hsinchu City mayoral candidate Ann Kao (高虹安) and her boyfriend have been listed as defendants over allegations of wage fraud related to her assistants, reports said Thursday (Nov. 17).

For several weeks, Kao has been facing accusations about issues including thesis plagiarism, the spending of wages destined for legislative assistants on private purchases, and the collection of undue wages for assistants who already held other jobs.

One of the alleged aides was Kao’s reported boyfriend, Lee Chung-ting (李忠庭). They visited investigators together Nov. 7 to supply them with materials reportedly proving their innocence, according to media reports.

Kao denied all the allegations, but the Taipei District Prosecutors Office completed the first stage of a process to investigate the issues, listing both Kao and Lee as defendants Thursday, the Liberty Times reported. The next phase of the prosecutors’ work needed to determine whether the law had been broken, but investigators were likely to postpone raids and searches until after the Nov. 26 election in order not to disrupt the campaign, the report said.

Kao is facing two main rivals in the election, Hsinchu City Vice Mayor Shen Hui-hung (沈慧虹) for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and City Councilor Lin Keng-jen (林耕仁) for the Kuomintang (KMT), as well as two independents.

Kao, 38, served as a vice president of data analytics at the Foxconn Technology Group, winning the backing of the iPhone maker’s founder, Terry Gou (郭台銘), to join the TPP and gain its nomination as a legislative candidate in 2020.