Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Ko Wen-je/Facebook
FORMER TAIPEI MAYOR Ko Wen-je, the leader of the TPP, was indicted earlier today. Prosecutors are seeking a jail sentence of 28 years and six months in jail for Ko.
Charges faced by Ko are mostly in connection to the Core Pacific City Mall. Ko is accused of taking bribes in order to increase the floor area ratio of the Core Pacific City Mall from Sheen Ching-jing, the chair of the Core Pacific Group.
The floor area ratio of the Core Pacific City Mall was increased from 392% to 840%, which would have given the Core Pacific City Mall more than 1,000 ping in extra space. Consequently, the Core Pacific Group would have made an extra 40 billion NT per year from the space increase.
Ko was sentenced alongside eleven other individuals. It was reported ahead of time that Ko would face a heavy sentence.
Still, the charges facing Ko pertain not only to the Core Pacific City Mall, but also to misappropriating political donations to the TPP. Some of the TPP’s financial irregularities emerged after reports in August of companies that claimed to have never been paid for advertising work for the TPP. A concert that the party claimed was for commercial purposes rather than campaigning also proved controversial, given that the steep price for tickets suggested that the concert was to raise funds for campaigning.
However, it later transpired that the TPP declared no campaign expenses last year in spite of fielding a presidential candidate for the 2024 elections. By contrast, the DPP reported 142 million NT in expenditures which included 62.4 million NT in campaign expenses, while the KMT reported 147 million NT in expenditures which included 23.2 million NT in campaign expenditures.
While Ko apologized for this scandal, that the TPP declared zero campaign expenses suggested at least gross incompetence, if not corruption. But as charges against Ko have piled up, the TPP has become increasingly defensive of its actions as a whole.
Photo credit: Ko Wen-je/Facebook
Even so, Ko could potentially face other charges of corruption down the line, with questions raised by an expensive office purchase by Ko using election subsidies, and the possibility of his wife Peggy Chen taking out a loan in the name of their son. Most serious of the charges against Ko that are not directly linked to the TPP’s campaign finances or the Core Pacific City Mall including his allowing Shin Kong Life Insurance to acquire the T17 and T18 plots of the Shilin Beitou Technology Park despite lacking an investment plan This would have been to benefit Shin Kong Life Insurance, seeing as his vice presidential candidate, Cynthia Wu, belonged to the family that runs the conglomerate.
Though the heavy sentence facing Ko is likely to be reduced later on, the onus is now on prosecutors to convince the public of their case against Ko. The TPP has framed the charges against Ko as a form of political persecution by the DPP targeting political opponents and prosecutors would likely seek to avoid such charges. After Ko was jailed, the TPP sought to rally its supporters in defense of him.
Still, Ko has now faced charges for months, and indications are that many members of the public may view the charges against him as justified. This reversal in public verdicts on Ko proves a sudden and meteoric fall from grace for someone who previously built his political career on the claim to be free of the partisan corruption that has long dogged Taiwanese politics.
It is also unclear what Ko’s current relationship with the TPP is. Ko was allowed to send a letter last week resigning from his position as chair of the TPP. But the party has built its party identity around Ko, seeing as Ko originally formed the party to support him in a presidential run.
A number of the TPP’s party leaders have themselves become tainted by corruption charges, such as Hsinchu mayor Ann Kao, who has since been removed from office. And so it is unclear who would take over the party in the absence of Ko’s leadership at a time when the TPP is increasingly indistinguishable from the KMT in its voting record. In this sense, the charges facing Ko are an existential danger for the TPP.