TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s High Court on Tuesday overturned a corruption conviction against Hsinchu Mayor Kao Hung-an (高虹安), clearing the way for her to resume her duties.
The Taipei District Court had previously found Kao guilty of corruption, prompting the Ministry of the Interior to suspend her from office, per CNA. On appeal, the High Court reversed the corruption ruling but convicted Kao of document falsification, sentencing her to six months in prison or a commutable fine.
Kao’s defense attorney requested that the sentence be converted to a fine. In response to the ruling, Kao said she would begin the process of resuming her duties as mayor as soon as possible, per Newtalk.
Kuomintang Hsinchu City chapter chair Wang Chih-hao (王志豪) said Kao had already suffered reputational damage despite the corruption charge being overturned, per UDN. He argued that Kao’s ability to secure more votes in a recall election than in her original mayoral race reflected public trust in her and demonstrated the strength of the opposition coalition in Hsinchu.
Pro-DPP legal commentator Huang Ti-ying (黃帝穎) criticized the ruling, alleging bias by the High Court judges, per Liberty Times. He warned the decision could set a negative precedent by effectively tolerating corruption, noting that three former aides in Kao’s office had confessed to related offenses.
Kao is currently viewed as the leading opposition-backed contender in the next Hsinchu mayoral election, per CMedia. However, her eligibility may still hinge on a separate defamation case now under appeal.
If the Supreme Court upholds the High Court’s ruling without allowing her to commute the sentence to community service, Kao would be barred from holding public office.
In the defamation case, the High Court found that Kao submitted an edited version of an academic essay to prosecutors while pursuing an aggravated defamation lawsuit against US-based academic Chen Shih-fen (陳時奮), per Liberty Times. The court ruled that Kao’s addition of an acknowledgment thanking the Institute for Information Industry could have misled prosecutors.
The court also found that Kao had plagiarized content from a journal article published by the Institute for Information Industry, on which she was listed as the lead author, citing extensive overlap between the works, per CNews.
However, the High Court reduced Kao’s sentence, ruling that some of Chen’s public comments — including a claim that two-thirds of Kao’s University of Cincinnati paper was plagiarized — were excessively harsh.
Responding to the ruling at the time, Kao said the edited version of the essay was not used in her original lawsuit against Chen and was the version publicly available at the time, per Storm Media. She also denied committing plagiarism, citing the University of Cincinnati’s assessment that her use of the material did not constitute academic misconduct, per ETtoday.
