The Presidential Office yesterday denied there was a political motive behind its decision to ask the Control Yuan to determine whether 17 high-ranking officials serving former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) should be held responsible for 36,000 missing documents.
Presidential Office spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) told a press conference yesterday morning that the Presidential Office was legally bound to report to the Control Yuan when it found a large number of documents missing. It had no other alternative, he said.
“We are doing this for the sake of the public interest,” he said. “It is also our duty to do everything in accordance with the law. There are no political considerations whatsoever.”
Lo said the decision was the result of a two-year investigation after Chen was found to have taken boxes of documents from his office after stepping down.
“It is not a small matter that 36,292 official documents are missing,” Lo said. “Our investigation showed that eight out of every 100 documents were returned, while the remaining 92 are missing.”
Lo said at this stage it is known that the Presidential Office received 38,924 documents between May 20, 2000, and May 19, 2008. Of those, 2,632 have been cataloged and are kept at the office, while the remaining 36,292 are missing.
Among the documents, 25,398 were classified documents from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and 13,526 were unclassified, he said.
The 36,292 missing documents disappeared after they were distributed to the offices of the president, the vice president, the secretary-general and two deputy secretary-generals, Lo said.
While some of the 17 officials in question have offered explanations, Lo yesterday urged them to face the people humbly and the outcome of the investigation honestly.
“The 36,000 missing documents concern the interests of the nation and its people,” Lo said.
Some of the former officials argued that they did not personally handle the documents, while Lo said he did not know how the documents went missing, but he wanted to know whether the officials should be held responsible if they failed to supervise the entire process properly.
Lo said they did not check whether similar incidents had occurred during Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) presidency because it was unnecessary, adding that there was no evidence that any of Lee’s officials had taken documents from the Presidential Office and no Lee-era presidential document had been found to be circulating outside of the office.
However, if the Democratic Progressive Party had found anything irregular, they were welcome to report the matter to authorities, Lo said.
While the Presidential Office has referred the case to the Control Yuan, Lo said that did not necessarily mean it would result in criminal charges against the former officials if the Control Yuan finds they should be held legally responsible.
However, the Presidential Office wants to pursue the matter carefully and deal with it one step at a time because it knows instigating criminal charges is a serious matter, Lo said.
In the meantime, the Presidential Office will fully cooperate with the Control Yuan’s inquest, he said.
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