Keelung City Civil Affairs Director Zhang Yuanxiang recently admitted to violating the Personal Data Protection Act and the Criminal Code for forgery of documents, and has resigned and his resignation has been approved. According to media reports, Zhang is suspected of abusing his power to enter the household registration system and illegally obtain people's personal information for the purpose of creating a petition to recall specific legislators. If this case is verified to be true, it is not just a general administrative negligence, but may involve deeper legal issues.
Forgery of documents is closely related to the crime of fraud
First of all, forging documents is not only a formal falsification, its essence is often highly intertwined with the crime of fraud. According to the statistical analysis of cases of "forgery of documents and seals" by the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of China (from October 2017 to 2012), among the 58,249 criminal suspects, as many as 72.8% were also involved in other crimes, among which fraud was the most common, accounting for 38.7%. These data show that in practice, forged documents are often just part of a larger fraud structure.
Forged documents are often used to commit fraud
Some people in society mistakenly believe that "forging a document is just writing it for someone else", which is a very dangerous idea. Let’s take a few scenarios as an example: if someone forges a house deed and registers the real estate that originally belonged to you under someone else’s name, this is a typical fraud; if someone forges a marriage certificate to claim that you are in a marital relationship, this violates personal identity and autonomy, and may even involve perjury and infringement of personal freedom. These examples all show that forged documents often do not exist in isolation, but are tools used to further defraud, embezzle property, and deprive people of their rights.
Does falsifying political signatures constitute fraud?
Back to the Zhang Yuanxiang case, even if it currently only involves forgery of documents and violation of the Personal Information Protection Act, if the purpose of his actions is to mislead the competent authority into believing that the number of signatures has reached the requirement and then initiate the recall procedure, it may actually constitute fraud under Article 339 of the Criminal Code or obstruction of elections under Article 98-2 of the Election and Recall Act. Whether it constitutes a crime remains to be clarified by the prosecutors and investigators. Keelung Mayor Xie Guoliang also pointed out that although the statutory penalty for forgery of documents is less than five years, if the person’s status as a public official is aggravated, the criminal liability can be increased by one-half, which should not be taken lightly.
Although the Zhang Yuanxiang case currently only involves forgery of documents and personal information protection law, if the purpose of forging the joint signature is to mislead the competent authority into believing that it meets the statutory threshold and thereby affect the legality of the recall procedure, it may also constitute the crime of fraudulent profit or obstruction of voting. (Note: Zhang has resigned since the incident broke out. Whether it constitutes fraud or other criminal facts needs to be investigated by the procuratorate)
City Councillor Miao Boya also stated in a media interview that if they forged documents today, they would forge ballots tomorrow! In a democratic society, we must respect the rules of the game.
The gap between social perception and legal reality
It is worth noting that the Kuomintang has repeatedly emphasized the need to severely punish falsified recall petitions. Legislator Weng Xiaoling once publicly stated: "In the future, anyone involved in forged petitions will be sentenced to a prison term of not more than five years, detention, and a fine of not more than one million yuan." However, local party branches of the party have frequently been involved in cases of dead people's petitions and forged documents, causing a serious contrast in social perception.
The integrity system is the foundation of a democratic society, and the document system is the core mechanism for protecting citizens' basic rights, public resource allocation and the legitimacy of the rule of law. If the act of forging documents is taken lightly, votes, academic qualifications, property, identity and other certificates will lose credibility, and the entire society will fall into a collapse of trust.
Facing up to the high degree of overlap between forgery of documents and fraud is an important step in improving the legal system. Any public official involved in the case should be dealt with more strictly in order to safeguard administrative ethics and democratic legitimacy. This incident deserves the whole society's high attention, and it also calls on political parties and government officials to consistently implement the rule of law and not say one thing and do another.
This article Forgery of documents is no small matter and is highly related to the crime of fraud. Let’s start with the Keelung government official incident. It first appeared in Chain News ABMedia.
