TAIPEI, July 8 (AP) -- An opposition lawmaker on Saturday disputed the accuracy of a report on the value of the jewelry collection of Taiwan's first lady, stoking the fires of a long-running campaign to remove her husband from office.

Nationalist Party Legislator Chiu Yi told Taiwanese cable news station TVBS that first lady Wu Shu-chen's jewelry collection had a value of around 42 million New Taiwan dollars (US$ 1.31 million; €1.05 million) -- more than 10 times the figure provided by the Presidential Office in a report filed to a civil service oversight board Friday.

Television footage of Wu adorned with expensive items including jade earrings and a pearl necklace have buttressed the opposition's effort to remove President Chen Shui-bian from office over a series of high-profile corruption scandals.

Last month, Chen's son-in-law was arrested on charges of insider trading. Prosecutors are now investigating whether Wu was involved in illegal financial dealings linked to the takeover of an upscale Taipei department store -- an allegation the Presidential Office denies.

In his remarks to TVBS, Chiu said the Presidential Office had seriously understated the value of Wu's jewelry collection in a report it filed Friday with the Control Yuan to comply with a Taiwanese law on wealth disclosure by senior officials.

The report listed 14 items held by Wu and a pair of watches owned by Chen, putting their total value at NT$3.72 million (US$115,000; €92,000).

"If you add to the report the jewelry worn by the first lady on public occasions, the total number of pieces is 27 and the value is NT$42.57 million," Chiu said, referring to items he claims had been captured in archived television footage but went undeclared by the Presidential Office.

Chiu did not say how he had arrived at the appraisals of the allegedly undeclared pieces.

His allegations come less than two weeks after an opposition bid to put a measure to recall Chen to Taiwanese voters failed to secure the necessary two-thirds majority in Taiwan's Legislature.

Despite the legislative setback, opposition politicians have kept up their efforts to force Chen from office two years before the end of his second and final four-year term, organizing island-wide petitions calling for his resignation, and maintaining a drumbeat of criticism in anti-government newspapers.

Chiu has been at the center of the storm. A declared candidate for the mayoralty of Taiwan's second-largest city, Kaohsiung, he won considerable notoriety in 2004 when he stood atop a truck that had rammed a police-guarded courthouse during protests over Chen's razor-thin election victory.

The protesters alleged that the poll was rigged -- an allegation that has never been proven.