Senior aide to Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-che interviewed as witness over alleged wiretap
Prosecutors interview frontrunner’s adviser as witness over claims of eavesdropping during heated contest for Taipei mayor
A scandal hanging over Taipei's mayoral elections intensified yesterday when the campaign policy director of independent candidate Dr Ko Wen-je was interviewed by prosecutors as a witness over an alleged wiretapping incident.
Ko himself has not been implicated in the incident, and opinion polls give him a healthy lead over his rival, Kuomintang candidate Sean Lien Sheng-wen, ahead of Saturday's poll.
Chang Ching-sen, the policy director at Ko's campaign headquarters, was questioned as a witness by prosecutors yesterday, a week after a more junior Ko aide and two technicians were grilled over their alleged involvement in the incident.
But it was an allegation by Ko's team that set events in motion. On November 3, Ko's office accused Alex Tsai Cheng-yuan, Lien's campaign manager, of obtaining a confidential document outlining Ko's management plans for City Hall.
Tsai said the document was leaked to him by proposed City Hall staff, but Ko's office in turn accused Tsai's team of wiretapping their office. They made a report to police, who later found what appeared to be speaker cables on the floor of the office.
Last week, prosecutors listed Peng Sheng-shao, the junior Ko aide, and two phone technicians as suspects in the alleged staged wiretap. Local media quoted one prosecutor as saying that one of the technicians confessed to placing the cables in Ko's office to persuade them to invest more in office security.