The country's top representative to New Zealand Victor Chin (
Chin was indicted by the Taipei District Court last month on forgery charges after he produced false receipts in an attempt to falsely claim entertainment expenses of up to NT$200,000 (US$6,099) during his previous tenure as head of MOFA's North American Affairs Department in December last year.
MOFA Spokesman Michel Lu (
His new dispatch will be to serve as a consultant in the country's trade mission office in Fiji, Lu said.
Lu said the decision to change Chin's job prior to a court ruling on his case was because the ministry believed that the official's involvement in the alleged scandal made it inappropriate for him to continue in his post as the head of a foreign service office.
"Chin will begin his new posting in Fiji within three months according to the ministry's procedures," Lu said.
The scandal happened last December when Chin allegedly asked his subordinate Gordon Yang (楊慶輝) to produce false receipts for reimbursement of 36 bottles of expensive French wine, which he claimed had been used in banquets Chin held with US and Canadian diplomats in Taiwan. But the banquets were never held and Chin kept the wine for himself.
Yang, son-in-law of Defense Minister Lee Jye (李傑), is now a secretary in the country's representative office in Washington. He received a suspended indictment for his involvement but was not punished by the ministry.
The MOFA announced in February that Chin and Yang had made false reimbursement claims and requested a legal investigation into the conduct of the two officials.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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