Prosecutors in Kaohsiung have charged seven people for helping a former KMT city council speaker cover up a scheme to claim public money for aides who never worked for her.

• Tseng Li-yen was already convicted of fraudulently claiming public funds for fake assistants and has been sentenced to 12 years in two rounds of trials, with the top court still reviewing the case.
• Six of her aides and secretaries testified under oath in 2023 that they had been paid, telling matching stories about receiving cash or envelopes of salary from her.
• Money trails showed the payments actually came from her husband or a private company she set up, and two of the men had never worked as her aides at all.
• A seventh man handed over his bank books, seals and passwords so the team could claim a monthly aide subsidy from the city council and then withdraw the money.

Outlook: The perjury and false-filing cases now head to court while the Supreme Court decides whether Tseng's 12-year sentence stands.