TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Two Kuomintang officials in Taichung have been detained following allegations of forgery with recall campaigns targeting two Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers, reports said Saturday.

The Taichung District Court approved prosecutors’ requests for the detention of Chen Chien-feng (陳劍鋒), secretary of the Taichung City party branch, and KMT official Wu Kang-lung (伍康龍), the Liberty Times reported. In the two separate recall campaigns, 83 and 66 signatories of the recall petitions had been found to have died before the petitions were filed.

The latest detentions followed a spate of similar investigations into the handling of recalls by local KMT branches in other cities, including Taipei, New Taipei, and Keelung. Taichung prosecutors raided eight locations in the city on Friday and questioned nine KMT officials listed as defendants and four witnesses overnight.

Investigators wanted to detain Chen and Wu because they were suspected of having copied names from KMT membership lists onto the lists of recall signatories. The two officials could be facing charges of forgery and breach of privacy.

Of the other officials questioned, six were released on bail ranging from NT$100,000 (US$3,250) to NT$200,000 and barred from leaving the country, while one defendant and the four witnesses were allowed to return home.