The legislature yesterday passed a conflict of interest law to prevent public officials from using their posts and positions for personal gain. Offenders will face fines of up to NT$7.5 million.
"Of all laws, this one is the most direct and efficient for the extermination of interest peddling," said KMT legislator Jao Yung-ching (
Jao estimated that the number of affected government officials and people's representatives was around 20,000 people, but was nearer 200,000 when officials' associates are included.
According to the Public Officials Conflict of Interests Prevention Law (
The "associates" defined by the law include the public officials' spouses and dependents, close relatives, the trustees of public officials' or their spouses' properties; and businesses of which the public officials, their spouses, dependents or close relatives are the proprietor, chairman, supervisors or managers.
The new law stipulates "profit" as being financial or non-financial, and covers employment, promotion, transfer and so on in government agencies, public schools and or state-run enterprises.
As representatives of the public, officials cannot participate in the review board vote on bills from which they or others could benefit.
While public officials are prohibited from taking advantage of their positions for personal gain or to benefit their associates, their associates are also forbidden from peddling influence to relevant agencies or using other illegal methods for their own profit.
In addition, according to the law, public officials and their associates cannot maintain any business relationship with agencies where the officials are serving.
Jao said the law was the first piece of legislation that focuses on the conflict of interests of public officials.
While public officials are subject to more than 20 laws, they all lack any concrete definition of what "conflict of interests" actually means and the measures needed to guard against such irregularities, Jao said.
He said this was the major reason for the existence of overly close relationships between politicians and business and the improper trafficking of interests and money politics.
"The law's passage has a huge effect in terms of improving local politics, especially correcting the much-criticized phenomenon of `government officials profiting their own families' and `people's representatives being contracted for public construction projects,'" Jao said.
In the Legislative Yuan alone, Jao estimated, the law is applicable to at least half of the total of 221 incumbent legislators.
New Party legislator Feng Ting-kuo (
"Business people should stay where they are if they want to do business. If they want to come to the Legislative Yuan, they should become professional lawmakers," Feng said.
Feng said some legislators try to gain from being in office because they have spent millions of NT dollars on their election campaigns.
"They try to get their hands into everything just to earn the money back," Feng said.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS