Richard Lee said Chen deserved recognition for “courageously coming out” to admit his mistake, but that Chen did not break the law because the Political Contribution Act (政治獻金法) did not take effect until March 31, 2004.
Richard Lee said Chen did not know how much money was wired overseas and how it was done because Wu was in charge of it.
Lin Te-hsun (林德訓), Chen’s office director, said they asked Wu about the details, but she said she could not remember. Lin said they welcomed the judiciary to investigate the matter.
Lee said that Chen was baffled by KMT Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu’s (洪秀柱) allegations about the funds and asked her to back up her claim.
Hung claimed earlier yesterday that she had sufficient evidence to prove that Chen’s son Chen Chih-chung (陳致中), and daughter-in-law Huang Jui-ching (黃睿靚) had laundered more than NT$900 million (US$30 million), which is now stashed in a Merrill Lynch bank branch in Switzerland.
“Both his son and Huang Jui-Ching are unemployed. How did they get so much money in their account?” she asked, while pointing out that the figure and the timing of the deposit coincided with the timeline of the PNG scandal.
The ministry said that the PNG funds were last traced to a bank in Singapore as Hung had pointed out, but it was not the same bank from which Huang Jui-ching’s Swiss account received the questionable sum.
Hung claimed that Merrill Lynch alerted Swiss federal authorities on the account discrepancies.
The authorities then contacted Taiwan’s Swiss representative office to request help on establishing contact with Taiwanese authorities.
MOFA Spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) yesterday confirmed that the ministry did receive the request about one month ago but said that the ministry was merely acting as a middleman in the matter.
“The ministry has no comment on the case,” he said. “Our only role was to relay the message from the Swiss authority to the Taiwanese judiciary system as requested by the Swiss.”
KMT spokeswoman Chen Shu-rong (陳淑容) yesterday urged Chen Shui-bian not to shift all the responsibility to his wife.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JENNY W. HSU AND MO YAN-CHIH
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