Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (
"This fund was very important for our relations with South Africa. As minister of foreign affairs, I was merely following the `top authority's' orders," Hu said before he walked into the courtroom.
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
When asked who the "top authority" was, Hu replied, "What do you think?"
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Taipei District Court Judges Liao Wen-yu (廖紋妤), Huang Shao-hung (黃紹紘) and Liu Huang-chi (劉煌基) also summoned Su Chih-cheng (蘇志誠), former top aide of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), and Yang Ching-chi (楊清吉), former chief accountant of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as witnesses in the case.
Su and Yang did not have any comments and left the court building right after the arraignment.
The session was held in camera because judges' questions to the witnesses concerned matters of national security and classified information.
According to Hu, when he was handling the secret fund as foreign minister, he always followed all orders, that were delivered by Su.
Su was Lee's top aide at the time. Hu said that he did not do anything illegal regarding the secret fund.
The scandal started with the disappearance in 1994 of US$4.5 million from a secret fund of US$10.58 million to secure diplomatic relations with South Africa. According to prosecutors, the National Security Bureau (NSB) paid the money to South Africa on behalf of the foreign ministry in May, 1994.
On April 4, 1999, the ministry returned a total of US$10.7 million, including interest, to the bureau. The bureau's former chief accountant, Hsu Ping-chiang (徐炳強), allegedly asked its then chief cashier Liu Kuan-chun (劉冠軍) to deposit US$7.5 million in the Taiwan Research Institute's bank account.
Liu is suspected of embezzling more than NT$192 million from the total amount. According to the Ministry of Justice's Bureau of Investigation, Liu left Taiwan on Sept. 3, 2000, and went to Shanghai. He surfaced in Bangkok in January, 2002 and then went to North America. According to sources, he was seen recently in Canada.
On Nov. 17 last year, the Taipei Prosecutors' Office charged Hsu and Liu with corruption.
Taiwan Research Institute president Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英) had allegedly wired the money to Ruentex Corp Chairman Yin Yen-liang's (尹衍樑) bank accounts in the US and Singapore. Yin then allegedly wired the money to one of Ruentex's bank accounts in Taiwan, after which he "donated" US$3 million of it to the institute.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods