Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers accused the Taipei City Government yesterday of fabricating stories to obfuscate any evidence of embezzlement from Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (
Ma on Wednesday said that his office's mishandling of the special mayoral allowance had been the result of an "administrative defect" brought about by Taipei City Government staffer Yu Wen (
Ma said that he had not been aware of Yu's substitutions.
"We have received information that Sun Chen-ni (孫振妮), a secretary in Ma's office, has admitted to prosecutors that she helped Yu to collect false receipts for reimbursement," DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) told a press conference.
DPP Legislator Hsieh Hsin-ni (
"The staffer said he had decided to reveal the information to me because he was uphappy that Ma was not taking responsibility for the irregularities," Hsieh said at a separate press conference, without identifying the informant.
Director of the mayor's office Cheng An-kuo (鄭安國), who resigned on Wednesday, said that 3,758 original receipts amounting to NT$1,410,898 (US$43,000) had been replaced, and that Yu's receipts added up to between NT$800,000 and NT$900,000, suggesting there was no room for embezzlement.
Cheng said that a backup fund had been created to cover any deficit in Ma's special mayoral allowance, and that Yu had claimed reimbursements against this fund.
DPP lawmakers said that they did not find the inconsistencies in the city government's explanations surprising at all.
That Yu substituted receipts to reduce his paperwork is a lie, Kuan said.
"Before Yu was transferred to another post [in June], he had been handling the reimbursement for 882 days. Was he really so busy that he couldn't deal with an average of four [original] receipts per day?" Kuan asked.
Kuan questioned whether Cheng had fabricated a story about the backup fund to explain away inconsistencies and confuse prosecutors.
DPP lawmakers also called into question Cheng's statement that "Ma's mayoral allowance fund was used for public affairs and public welfare, including red envelopes for newlyweds and white envelopes for funerals."
"According to a document from the Ministry of Audit, the Taipei City Government has earmarked NT$1.8 million annually for this purpose. Why did they need extra money from Ma's mayoral allowance fund for this purpose?" Hsieh asked.
Taipei City Government Secretariat Director Lee Sush-der's (李述德) statement that half of Ma's monthly mayoral allocation of NT$80,000 had been used to reward his staff was also questionable, the lawmakers added.
"In 2001 and 2002, more than 90 percent of Ma's special allowance fund was used to reward his staff members. It's unusual. Even more unusual is that this percentage dropped sharply from 2003, when Yu started handling the reimbursement," Kuan said.
In response, Lee later yesterday said the allocation of NT$1.8 million had not been enough to cover all contributions to weddings and funerals, and so part of the fund was used to pay for these expenses.
In response to the DPP's accusation that the backup fund did not exist, Lee said that part of the fund came from the mayor, who received the money as a reward from the central government for the city government's handling of traffic violations.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday urged the public not to judge Ma until a verdict has been rendered.
"Only judges are authorized to decide whether Mayor Ma is guilty or not. We should respect everybody, especially since Ma has not been convicted of anything," Su said when approached by the media for comment.
"People make mistakes. It does not matter whether you are pan-blue or pan-green," he said.
also see story:
KMT's Ko recants anti-Ma comments
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS