Editorial: Shadows in the sunshine

The uproar over real estate owned by Ting Yuan-chin (丁原進) -- a former head of the National Police Administration and now a national policy advisor to the president -- has snowballed within a few days. What began as a financial dispute with the interior designer of his house has ended up raising questions about how Ting acquired the money to buy the house -- and consequently about his integrity. Now, reports are coming out that Ting owns not one house but two, and that he did not fully disclose his assets to the government as required by law.

Since it went into effect in 1993, the Public Functionary Assets Disclosure Law (公務人員財產申報法) has provided ample information to the media about which official is the richest and who owns the largest number of shares or most valuable land -- perfect gossip fodder. Other than that, the law has only had limited effect in monitoring corruption among government officials. Taiwan ranked No. 5 among Asian countries in Transparency International's corruption-clean list for this year, behind Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong. Not too bad, but not exactly honorable either.

The people of Taiwan had high expectations about the disclosure law, often called the "sunshine law." In reality, however, the law is a toothless tiger. Eight years ago, people were shocked by revelations that then-premier Lien Chan (連戰) had failed to report a NT$36 million "loan" to Wu Tzer-yuan (伍澤元), erstwhile Pingtung County commissioner jailed for 15 years on a corruption conviction, bailed because of "ill health" and who is now -- what else? -- a legislator. Lien's case was closed with a fine of NT$300,000.

In the Chung Hsing Bills Finance scandal (興票案), People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) admitted to falsifying his asset disclosures by hiding the transfer of funds to his son's account and the purchase of US real estate. But the Control Yuan's asset disclosure committee made the ridiculous suggestion back in April that he not be punished. Control Yuan members angrily rejected the committee's report on grounds of insufficient evidence. The case is still pending at the Yuan.

The disclosure law is ineffective because the Control Yuan lacks the resources to enforce it. By law, 1,731 officials must file asset-disclosure reports this year, but the Yuan only has enough resources to randomly review one-tenth of them. The maximum fine for falsifying reports is just NT$360,000 -- hardly a deterrent. And even if it discovers suspicious movements of assets or other signs of corruption in the reports, the Control Yuan has never gone a step further and investigated criminal responsibility.

Ting's case involves falsified asset disclosure and a suspiciously dramatic increase in wealth. But the Control Yuan can only investigate the former, while Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) has not said whether a criminal investigation will be launched. But it is obvious that prosecutors should investigate the case.

To give the asset disclosure law real teeth, the government should amend it and increase the scale of penalties. Criminal penalties and fines in proportion to the value of the "forgotten" assets are two possible options. The justice ministry should also accelerate the formation of an anti-corruption agency and introduce a "reverse burden of proof" system, whereby officials who fail to clarify the sources of their finances must provide proof that they were honestly obtained and be punished if they can't. It is only reasonable to expect that public functionaries who wield power should be subject to regulation.