TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Keelung District Prosecutors Office announced criminal indictments of seven people for forging signatures of legislative recall petitions.
After two months of investigation, prosecutors concluded their investigation into KMT officials in Keelung, who allegedly used signatures of deceased individuals for recall campaign petitions targeting DPP legislators, reported UDN.
A former director of Keelung’s Civil Affairs Department, Chang Yuan-hsiang (張淵翔), and the former chair of the KMT’s Keelung City Party Committee, Wu Kuo-sheng (吳國勝) are among the suspects now facing trial. Prosecutors reportedly concluded their investigation after interviewing Keelung KMT party member and Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) earlier this week.
Four of the seven defendants, including Chang and Wu, are still in custody, while the remaining three defendants have been released on bail. In the recall campaign targeting DPP City Councilors Cheng Wen-ting (鄭文婷) and Chang Ji-ho (張之豪), Chang Yuan-hsiang and others are suspected of using non-public government databases to forge petition signatures
Prosecutors allege the recall campaigners were in a hurry to submit signatures before the change in Taiwan’s recall law took effect back in late February. To meet the lower signature threshold before the legal changes, KMT organizers used personal information from multiple deceased individuals to inflate the number of signatures in Renai District and Anle District.
Prosecutions of another eight people arrested in the probe have been deferred, while prosecutors declined to pursue charges against three other individuals, per UDN.
