TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Medigen (高端) announced its intention to sue five KMT politicians for leaking the company’s private shareholder information to the public, per a company press release released on Jan. 4.

Medigen is a publicly traded biotech company that produced COVID-19 vaccines procured by the Taiwan government. However, it came under attack by Kuomintang legislators and legislative candidates at a press conference on January 2, who released company shareholder information that claimed 1,000 shareholders were Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members.

KMT legislators said the list was provided by a whistleblower, but Medigen said shareholder names are not public information. The company suspected illegal means were used to acquire such information and had its lawyers file lawsuits against the five KMT politicians.

The five accused include incumbent KMT Taipei legislator Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇), KMT Taichung legislative candidate Sean Liao (廖偉翔), KMT Taichung legislative candidate Alfred Lin (林家興), KMT Taichung legislative candidate Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋), and KMT at-large candidate Lin Chyong-jaw (林瓊嘉).

Medigen said the leak of shareholder data was either theft of company information or stock brokerage data. Furthermore, the leaked list may contain important personal information, such as ID numbers, dates of birth, telephone numbers, addresses, and number of shares held.

Medigen says its lawyers have reported the case to the police and have requested assistance in investigating where the theft occurred and whether shareholder rights were compromised in a single year or multiple years.

Previously, Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) rebuffed KMT legislative candidates' claims that Medigen stockholders included many DPP members by noting that Medigen is a publicly traded company and does not keep any documentation about its stockholders’ party affiliation, per RTI.