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Prosecutors to call Presidential Office officials over alleged embezzlement

"The officials will be interviewed as witnesses starting this week."

Eric Chen, prosecutor at the Black Gold Investigation Center of the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office

Taipei prosecutors this week will begin interviewing Presidential Office officials over the alleged embezzlement.

"The officials will be interviewed as witnesses starting this week," Eric Chen (陳瑞仁), a prosecutor at the Black Gold Investigation Center of the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office told the Taipei Times yesterday.

The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday reported that a prosecutorial source said that investigators and the Ministry of Audit had discovered that around NT$15 million (US$458,100) in reimbursements for Pacific Sogo Department Store vouchers had been requested.

The report said the NT$15 million in vouchers were submitted for reimbursement from 2003 to last year.

The paper said that since first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) has been accused of acting on behalf of a businessmen who sought to win ownership of Sogo and had allegedly given Wu a number of Sogo vouchers, investigators were looking into whether some of the vouchers were those that Wu allegedly received.

Chen declined to comment on the news report.

Ministry of Audit Spokesman Wang Yung-hsing (王永興) yesterday told the press that the ministry had handed over documents related to the Presidential Office's reimbursement of expenditures from a "special allowance" fund to prosecutors, and the ministry would no longer comment on the matter.

The Ministry of Audit last week called for an investigation into allegations of embezzlement at the Presidential Office, saying it had received insufficient information to verify the legality of NT$48 million in expenditures from a secret Presidential Office slush fund.

Wang had said that documents related to the Presidential Office's reimbursement of expenditures from a "special allowance" fund last year contained irregularities.

The ministry had said that about 76.76 percent of the expenditures covered by the fund -- NT$48 million in total -- had not been reimbursed in conformity with the regulations.

According to the ministry's investigation, NT$47.9 million out of NT$48 million was spent last year, among which receipts for NT$24 million were classified and receipts for another NT$12.8 million were deemed unqualified for reimbursement.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) has accused Wu of pocketing cash through reimbursements from fake expenditures, using receipts provided by a close friend, Lee Bi-chun (李碧君).

Those receipts were issued by the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Taipei, the Ambassador Hotel and Sogo Department Store, among others, Chiu alleged.

"We did find that some copies of the receipts Legislator Chiu provided to us had been used to reimburse expenditures from the fund, but we can't make public the amount, value or people who requested reimbursement," Wang said yesterday.
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