Taiwan: 5 businessmen sentenced for buying votes for Chinese Nationalist Party candidate

The Taipei District Court on Monday sentenced at least five Taiwanese businesspeople working in China after they were found guilty of taking money from Chinese authorities to purchase votes for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate, Han Kuo-yu in the 2020 presidential election in the island. According to Taipei Times, the investigation revealed that the Taiwanese businessmen were organising gatherings and banquets in a bid to convince the Taiwanese in Hunan to support the KMT and Han’s presidential campaign in late 2019 including offers to pay for their airfares.

In the largest election event, the defendants on December 21, 2019, had organised a year-end banquet for Taiwanese at Changsha’s Huatian Hotel. In that gathering, the businessmen reportedly instructed attendees to buy tickets to fly home to vote for Han as well as other KMT candidates on 11 January 2020 and showed them how to 1,500 yuan to pay for the cost of the airfares, the investigation uncovered.

Documents showed that 467 Taiwanese who attended the event applied for the money, the prosecutors said according to the report. The Taiwanese District court ruling even said that Lin and the defendants gave “bribes” in exchange for votes for specific candidates and violated the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act. The court, hence, sentenced Lin Huai, the chairman of the Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises Changsha City Branch to three years and 10 months in jail with deprivation of his civil rights for four years. 

Others, convicted in the same case received prison terms for 20 months and these included,  China New Family Association chairwoman Chiang Ming-sia, Hunan Shaoyang City Association in Taiwan director Chang Kuo-chun, Hengyang-based businessman Chuang Huan-chang and Chinese Women's Federation deputy secretary Shen Bin who conducted business in Hunan, reported Taipei Times. 

Funding for the entire scheme came from Huang

Reportedly, the probe also found that the funding for the scheme came from Huang Daonian, director of the Economic Bureau at Changsha City's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO). Both, the local TAO and the Changsha City Government allocated about 3.5 million yuan (USD 551,268) to support subsidies for Taiwanese to return home to vote. Notably, the investigation found that Lin applied for the same and received around 1.49 million yuan. As per the report, the prosecutors said that Huang allegedly told his staff to assist Lin as well as other Taiwanese living in Hunan. After the sentences were handed out, Han’s office said on Monday that he was unaware of the events and that his election campaign headquarters did not get any funds from the people or organisations involved in the scheme.

Image: AP