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Control Yuan impeaches two officials in Yin case

Control Yuan member Chao Ron-yaw, right, informs the press on the impeachment of two military officials in the Yin murder case yesterday. PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DER, TAIPEI TIMES

Director of the Ministry of National Defense's Bureau of Military Justice Liu Chin-an (劉錦安), and retired military prosecutor Wu Jung-chang (吳榮章) were impeached yesterday by the Control Yuan for failing to to protect crucial evidence relating to the murder of former navy captain Yin Ching-feng (尹清楓).

The Control Yuan ruled against impeaching former navy Captain Chen Kuo-hsiang (陳國祥), head of the navy's propaganda department at the time, on similar charges.

Control Yuan members refused to comment as to why Chen was not impeached.

The Control Yuan said yesterday that during the initial stage of the murder investigation in 1993, Liu and Wu were reckless in their efforts to collect evidence, which resulted in the disappearance of crucial proof.

Liu and Wu were in charge of the team that investigated Yin's 1993 murder. The Control Yuan said Liu failed to find useful evidence in Yin's office, although a team from the Ministry of National Defense (MND) subsequently found recorded tapes of telephone conversations between Yin and others in the office.

Indeed, the Control Yuan said, Liu had "failed to cooperate sufficiently with the the investigation" and had therefore "seriously affected the investigation. They also charged that he had been "found to have hidden evidence."

"The reckless attitude and deliberate hiding of evidence by Liu had seriously violated regulations that officials should follow," said Chao Ron-yaw (趙榮耀), a Control Yuan member of the task force.

Regarding Wu's role, Chao said that during the first week after the murder, when Wu, the senior prosecutor in the case, had custody of the tapes, he did not follow standard procedures by logging their contents. He also said that when Wu gave the tapes to the MND team, members found that some of their contents had been erased.

"There is no way to establish whether Wu erased that content or not. But he apparently did not fulfill his duty to take care of crucial evidence," Chao said.

Chao also said that he regretted that Chen was not impeached, though he did not know why.

The impeachment move taken by the Control Yuan follows its recent expression of dissatisfaction over the MND's decision to punish only two middle-ranking officials over the Lafayette frigate scandal.

Liu and Wu's case will be sent to the Judicial Yuan's Committee for the Discipline of Public Functionaries (公務員懲戒委員會), which will investigate the case and decide if disciplinary action should be taken against the two.
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