Court gives mostly suspended sentences in recall forgery case

Taichung, March 6 (CNA) The Taichung District Court on Friday handed down mostly suspended sentences to workers at the Kuomintang's (KMT) Taichung chapter for falsifying documents in an effort to recall two lawmakers from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) last year.

In a brief statement, the court said it sentenced the chapter's senior officials, Chen Chien-feng (陳劍鋒) and Wu Kang-long (伍康龍), to 21 months and 23 months in prison, respectively, suspended for five years.

Both Wu and Chen were also stripped of their civil rights for two years and ordered to pay NT$300,000 (US$9,452) and NT$250,000 to the public treasury, respectively, the court said.

It also sentenced 30 other party staff to prison terms ranging from three to 14 months, all suspended for two to three years. Two others, surnamed Chou (周) and Mai (買), received jail terms of nine months and one year, respectively, but those sentences were not suspended.

The court did not specify why it did not suspend Chou and Mai's sentences, noting only that the rulings could be appealed.

All of them were found guilty of violating the Personal Data Protection Act.

According to the indictments filed by prosecutors, the 34 individuals allegedly forged 4,258 signatures following the chapter's January 2025 decision to launch recall petitions against Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) and Ho Hsin-chun (何欣純).

At the time, Wu served as the chief of the recall campaign, while Chen assisted in its promotion.

The two men directed their staff to organize and shuffle the forged signatures to avoid detection before submitting the completed petitions to the Taichung Election Commission, prosecutors alleged.

In recall campaigns, people initiating a recall need to collect the signatures of certain percentages of eligible voters in the constituency to get it to a vote.