Five former ministers under the previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration were indicted by the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office yesterday on charges of misusing funds.
They are former justice minister Morley Shih (施茂林), former minister of the interior Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋), former education minister Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝), former minister of examinations Lin Chia-cheng (林嘉誠) and former minister of the civil service Chu Wu-hsien (朱武獻).
Chen Yun-nan (陳雲南), a spokesman for the Supreme Prosecutors Office’s Special Investigation Panel, said that a subordinate to Tu, two subordinates to Shih and another to Lee were also indicted on charges of collecting fraudulent receipts for the ministers.
Chen said the five former ministers were suspected of using fraudulent receipts to claim reimbursements from their special allowance funds in violation of the Criminal Code.
Prosecutors alleged that Tu used a number of fraudulent receipts to claim reimbursements amounting to NT$360,000 (US$12,000), Shih NT$180,000, Lee NT$40,000, Lin NT$610,000 and Chu NT$65,000.
Chen said prosecutors were still investigating officials from the previous Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government for their use of discretionary funds, among them then premier Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) and then vice premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄). Siew is now the vice president and Liu the premier.
The KMT legislative caucus last May filed a suit with the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, asking the prosecutors to investigate ministers in the DPP government’s use of discretionary funds.
The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office last September indicted former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), former DPP chairman Yu Shyi-kun and former National Security Council secretary-general Mark Chen (陳唐山) on suspicion of misusing their special allowance funds.
Lu, Yu and Chen were charged with corruption and forgery. Their cases are pending in the Taipei District Court.
At a press conference yesterday, DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said the prosecutors only chose to indict former DPP officials, claiming political considerations were involved in the investigation.
“Prosecutors investigate green officials and avoid those who are blue,” Cheng said, calling on justice authorities and the legislature to swiftly provide a regulation on discretionary fund to solve the controversy “because in the past it has been an unwritten rule that officials have flexibility when spending their special allowance fund.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY FLORA WANG
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant