Former deputy secretary-general of the Presidential Office Chen Che-nan (陳哲男) was found to have asked for traveling expenses for secret overseas trips, traded stocks during office hours, made false declarations about his family property and abused his power as a public servant, according to the results of an internal investigation by the Presidential Office released yesterday.
The report was reviewed by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who demanded Presidential Office Secretary-General Yu Shyi-kun revise the office's internal management in order to avoid another such scandal.
According to Hsieh Chien-tsai (謝建財), the director-general of the Government Ethics Department, a task force established to investigate possible illegalities inside the Presidential Office questioned more than 300 staff members.
The report on newly discovered instances of alleged impropriaties by Chen Che-nan will now be transferred to judicial investigators working on his case, Hsieh said.
According to Hsieh, starting in May 2000, Kao Shen-shen (高慎慎), an Accounting Department official, helped Chen Che-nan manage his personal finances. Between early 2001 and March last year, Chen Che-nan asked Kao to help him with stock transactions. In August 2003, Kao opened a personal account, through which she used the money wired from Chen Che-nan to trade stocks for three times.
Hseih said that by comparing Kao and Chen's accounts, the task force discovered that they traded nine similar kinds of stocks. He said that the task force was not sure if Kao had profited because of her following Chen's instructions.
The task force, however, refused to confirm whether the amount of stock transactions was near NT$100 million (US$2.97 million), as reported by a Chinese-language evening newspaper yesterday.
Hsieh also stressed the limitations of the internal investigation.
Hsieh said Kao had helped Chen Che-nan make false declarations about his family property. Both Kao's actions and Chen Che-nan's abuse of power will be reported to the Control Yuan because of the obvious violation of the Civil Servant Work Act (公務人員服務法) and related laws.
The investigation also found that Chen Che-nan had made several secret overseas trips without filing applications for official leave.
The task force provided a record of 18 trips Chen Che-nan made while he was deputy secretary-general of the Presidential Office and national policy advisor.
According to Chu Yung-lung (朱永隆), director-general of the Presidential Office's Personnel Department, six trips were made without informing the department -- four to to Vietnam, one to South Korea and one to Indonesia. One of the trips to Vietnam and one to South Korea were business trips while the rest were personal visits, Chu said.
The Presidential Office's Department of Public Affairs refuted legislators' allegations that Chen Che-nan had visited Indonesia to arrange Vice President Annette Lu's (
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