Former People's Party Chairman Ke Wenzhe was involved in a political donation and breach of trust case. He appealed after being sentenced in the first instance. The High Court today summoned accountant Duanmuzheng to open a preparatory court. Duanmuzheng admitted the crime and only appealed against the sentencing. His legal team proposed a separation of trials, believing that Duanmuzheng The "false business registration" case involved has little connection with the criminal facts and issues of the other defendants and can be tried independently. It is also argued that Duanmu Zheng believed that Li Wenjuan, the former head of Muke Public Relations Company, and He Aiting, the accountant of Muke Company, would complete the evidence afterwards, so it was not a serious crime.
Regarding the political donation case, Ke Wenzhe instructed his cronies Li Wenzong and his sister Li Wenjuan to set up Muke Company to misappropriate more than 67.34 million yuan in political donations. In addition, he even misappropriated more than 8.27 million yuan in public funds from the Zhongwang Foundation. However, Duanmuzheng assisted in the crime and registered 8 false transaction expenditures without verification. Duanmuzheng was sentenced to 1 year in prison for the crime of publishing false and accurate documents in the first instance business. Li Wenjuan was sentenced to 2 years for the crime of joint public welfare embezzlement. August was charged with filling in false accounting vouchers and should be executed in April of 2 years.
After the case was appealed, the High Court held a hearing today and only summoned Duanmuzheng to attend the court. However, he left the whole process to the legal team to speak. He did not speak himself. His defense lawyer Ye Jianwei requested a separate trial in court, arguing that Duanmuzheng's business involved false accusations and was not closely related to the facts and issues of the crimes against which other defendants were accused. There was room for independent trials and he hoped that the court would conduct separate trials.
Regarding the sentencing part, defense lawyer Wang Shenghui argued that Duanmu Zheng did not deliberately create false accounts, but after the Supervisory Yuan reviewed and requested corrections, because Li Wenjuan and He Aiting said they would complete the relevant vouchers afterwards, Duanmu Zheng made eight entries based on trust. This was not a serious crime as claimed by the prosecutor.
The prosecutors presented the conversation records between accounting firm employee Dai Jiahui and Duanmuzheng's assistant Chen Weixuan as new evidence. However, the defense countered that Dai Jiahui did not actually participate in the declaration of political donations, nor did she join the political donation declaration LINE group of Duan Muzheng, Li Wenjuan, He Aiting and Chen Weixuan, and did not understand the actual declaration situation. The relevant statements were only speculation and inconsistent with the actual situation.
Duanmuzheng's legal team also questioned the sentencing in the first instance, arguing that the original sentencing focused on factors that were unfavorable to Duanmuzheng and did not fully consider favorable circumstances. The defense also proposed a number of similar judgments in cases that were falsely published, arguing that compared with similar cases in the past, the punishment Duanmuzheng received in the first instance was significantly heavier.
The appointed judge Lu Ningli said that the collegial panel will evaluate whether to separate Duanmuzheng for trial; due to the large number of defendants in this case, subsequent court dates will be notified separately, and the case will be pending for review.
