Lawmakers want Ma's bank accounts made public

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday urged Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to make public the details of his salary accounts as well as a full list of names of Taipei City Government staffers who have received rewards from his mayoral special allowance fund.

DPP Legislator Lin Kuo-ching (林國慶) told a press conference that since Ma's special allowance was remitted into the mayor's salary account, prosecutors should investigate the account to understand how Ma spent the money.

He added that they should also consider freezing his accounts in order to prevent any details about them from being altered since Ma's wife works at the International Commercial Bank of China -- now known as Mega Bank -- where Ma holds one of his accounts.

DPP Legislator Chen Hsien-chung (陳憲中), who was also at the conference, said Ma had failed to detail who he had rewarded with his mayoral special allowance over the past eight years in the name list the city government announced last Saturday, which prompted Chen's suspicion of illegal goings on with the name lists.

He urged Prosecutor Hou Kuan-jen (侯寬仁) to investigate whether the city government was trying to falsify the name lists.

Meanwhile, DPP Legislator Hsieh Hsin-ni (謝欣霓) told a separate press conference that she had evidence showing that some of the 3,754 receipts that were connected with Ma's special allowance involved purchases of women's underwear.

reason

Hsieh said the purchases showed that the reason why city government staffer Yu Wen (余文), who was held responsible for the mishandling of the fund, had substituted receipts for smaller amounts with personal receipts for larger amounts was that the smaller receipts involved private instead of official expenditure.

In response, Taipei City Government Secretariat Director Lee Sush-der(李述德) told a press conference yesterday that the city government would cooperate with prosecutors if they ask for the mayor's account details or name lists.

But Lee said the city government had explained everything for now and it would not make these things public just because legislators asked it to do so.

He added that there were no private purchases in the special allowance receipts as Hsieh mentioned, but he was not sure if the receipts Yu used to replace the government's contained such purchases.