Ko’s spouse clarifies sudden bank deposit hike

TAIPEI (TVBS News) — In a Facebook post on Wednesday (Dec. 6), Chen Pei-chi, the spouse of Ko Wen-je, the presidential candidate from the Taiwan People's Party (TPP), revealed the main reason for an increase in their bank deposits was the receipt of NT$4.22 million from a public service pension, which they received after Ko's term as Mayor of Taipei had concluded.

This statement came in response to concerns raised after the Central Election Commission(CEC) disclosed financial declarations for presidential candidates a day earlier, showing Ko's bank deposits had risen by NT$2.88 million from the previous year.

Chen, who has been responsible for preparing Ko's financial declarations for several years, including his eight-year tenure as Taipei mayor, praised the Control Yuan's property declaration system for its user-friendliness.

She said it is linked to the Finance Ministry's website and allows for easy access to the necessary data, with calculations based on the bank deposits as of Nov. 1.

However, she noted that the process for fulfilling the CEC's property declaration requirements, which involves handwritten and physical submission of forms, was incompatible with the Control Yuan's document handling. This led to the task being completed by younger team members.

Chen meticulously calculated both the savings and net value of funds in the declarations. This careful accounting included two residual payment insurance policies, which still had value due to savings, even though most of the insurance premiums had already been paid.

The couple had paid approximately NT$700,000 in insurance premiums that year but did not explicitly list this in the commission's financial report form due to a lack of specific fields for paid premiums.

In her post, Chen expressed surprise at the deposit increase, given that Ko, who had retired and thus had no salary income and as chairman of the TPP, also received no salary.

The family had only her own hospital income to rely on, coupled with increased household expenses, which made the discovery of the NT$4.22 million pension deposit all the more unexpected.

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