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A court in Taiwan has ordered the release of a former mayor and presidential candidate who was arrested over his alleged role in a corruption scandal, citing insufficient evidence for his detention. Taipei District Court on Monday ruled that Ko Wen-je, a former mayor of Taipei and the leader of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), should go free after finding that prosecutors had failed to make the case for his detention. The court said prosecutors had not met the standard of there being a “high possibility” Ko had committed a crime. “It cannot be concluded that the defendant… knowingly violated the law,” the court said in its ruling.
Ko was arrested on Saturday as part of a probe into alleged corruption in the redevelopment of the Core Pacific City shopping centre in the Taiwanese capital. Ko, who came third in January’s presidential election, told reporters outside court that there was “no evidence” of his involvement in the real estate scandal. A surgeon by training, Ko entered politics in 2014 when he successfully ran for the mayorship of Taipei as an independent candidate.
Re-elected as mayor of Taipei in 2018, he founded the TPP the following year as a third force to challenge the dominance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and China-leaning Kuomintang (KMT). Under the TPP banner, Ko received about one-quarter of the vote in the last presidential election, which was won by the DPP’s William Lai Ching-te. While the TPP has only eight legislators in Taiwan’s 113-seat parliament, the party has gained outsized influence as both the DPP and KMT lack a ruling majority. Ko, who draws much of his support from young people, is widely seen as a contender for the next election in 2028, although his popularity has been dented by a separate campaign funds scandal.
On Thursday, Ko said he would take a three-month leave of absence from the TPP leadership to take responsibility for the misreporting of campaign money and the use of election subsidies to set up a personal office space.