A Tainan district court ordered Taiwan People's Communist Party Chairman Lin Te-wang held incommunicado on Saturday after prosecutors alleged he campaigned for borough chief under Beijing's direction and with Chinese funding, the Tainan District Prosecutors' Office said. The ruling lands three weeks before Taiwan's nationwide local elections on Nov. 28, when voters choose mayors, county magistrates and thousands of neighborhood-level officials.
Joint probe across Tainan and Hsinchu
Prosecutors in Tainan and Hsinchu said they formed a joint task force after separate intelligence reports alleged foreign interference in the upcoming ballot. Investigators searched multiple locations on Friday and questioned 13 defendants in Tainan plus one defendant and nine witnesses in Hsinchu, according to a statement released Sunday.
The offices said party central committee member Chen Chen-chou ran for borough chief in Hsinchu's Wuling Borough at Lin's direction. Both men were questioned on suspicion of violating Taiwan's Anti-Infiltration Act and election laws. Prosecutors argued each posed a flight risk and could collude to destroy evidence.
Court orders and bail conditions
Judges in Tainan granted the prosecution's request to detain Lin without visitation rights. In Hsinchu, Chen was released on NT$50,000 bail and placed under residential restrictions, prosecutors said. Other people questioned were released pending further investigation.
According to the prosecutors' account, Lin sought the Tainan Borough warden post in Xinying District while allegedly receiving instructions and financial support from the Chinese Communist Party. Investigators said he repeatedly recruited eligible voters to travel to China, where they received free hospitality that prosecutors characterized as an attempt to buy votes.
A candidate with prior legal battles
Lin, a former Kuomintang central committee member who later founded the Taiwan People's Communist Party, has faced earlier allegations of Chinese financial backing in other races. Taipei prosecutors previously charged him in a separate infiltration case, but courts acquitted him last year for insufficient evidence; the High Prosecutors' Office said it was weighing another appeal while investigators gathered fresh material.
Sunday's detention does not resolve those earlier proceedings, but it signals that authorities view the borough-level campaigns as a fresh front in election-security enforcement. With mail-in ballots and candidate registration deadlines approaching, the case is likely to surface in legislative debates over how aggressively to police cross-strait contact during campaign season.
What happens before Nov. 28
Prosecutors have not announced additional indictments, and Lin's lawyers have not publicly commented on the detention order. Election officials said the Nov. 28 nine-in-one cycle remains on schedule, though any conviction before polling day could disqualify a nominee. Opposition parties are expected to seize on the allegations as proof that Beijing is targeting Taiwan's grassroots politics, while Lin's supporters have previously portrayed earlier probes as politically motivated.
For voters in Tainan and Hsinchu, the immediate question is whether investigators expand the case to more campaigns or treat the weekend's searches as a contained intervention tied to two borough races on opposite sides of the island.