An unnamed Cabinet minister was quoted in the Marshall Islands Journal yesterday as saying he had been offered a US$100,000 bribe by Taiwan's ambassador to the Marshall Islands in exchange for a vote in parliament re-electing former President Imata Kabua.
"It is impossible that Taiwan would do such a thing," said spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Henry Chen (陳銘政).
"Our cooperation plans with the Marshall Islands are on a `government-to-government' level and not directed towards a particular individual," he said.
He noted that the only commitments that Taiwan made to the Marshall Islands as a means of further bolstering bilateral ties were two agricultural projects, a road development project, a fishery cooperation program, and an airport hangar construction project.
Taiwan pledged to assist the South Pacific country in reconstructing an airport terminal and improving a five-kilometer highway when the two sides forged diplomatic ties in November 1998.
In October, Taipei gave US$2 million to help the Marshalls with a US$28 million deal to purchase two German-made planes.
Unnamed government officials in the Marshalls claimed that as much as US$7 million in `secret money' has seeped into the country -- secret because it was not deposited into Ministry of Finance coffers, but Huang Ju-hou (
The new government has now set up an inquiry to investigate alleged secret deals between Taipei and the previous administration.
However, Chen emphasized that cooperation plans with the Marshalls have been approved by the Legislative Yuan, and that "Taiwan does not have the financial ability to engage in `dollar diplomacy.'"
Taiwan's ambassador Liu Fu-tien (
"I can say definitely this is not so because such things are against our government policy," Liu said. "Such a matter should be taken to court. What is important to remember is that there must be evidence, not just rumor."
The Marshall Islands Journal also said a recently appointed Cabinet minister of the new government of President Kessai Note provided details of the alleged bribe in response to the paper's questions.
The minister said he was approached about 10 days before the Jan. 3 presidential election in the Nitijela (parliament) while he was still a senator-elect.
The minister claimed Liu came to his home and handed him an envelope containing US$10,000 in cash and wrote a message promising additional money.
"[Liu] seemed paranoid that someone would be listening, so he didn't say anything but wrote down a message on the back of a business card," the minister told the newspaper.
The message, he said, offered him an additional US$90,000 after Jan. 3 for a vote in Kabua's favor. The ambassador then tore up the note and flushed it down the toilet at the minister's home, he said.
He said that after giving back the money, he called a local attorney.
The lawyer encouraged him to tell other United Democratic Party (UDP) members about the attempted bribe, which the minister said he did during the UDP's final meeting on Jan. 2.
No one else admitted they had been offered a bribe, he said.
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