The Taipei District Court announced yesterday that former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (
Ma is suspected of embezzling NT$11 million [US$333,000] and was indicted on Feb. 13 on corruption charges.
Prosecutors alleged that between December 1998 and last July, Ma wired half of his monthly special allowance -- NT$170,000 -- directly into a personal account. They also claimed that Ma has NT$11,176,227 in bank accounts belonging to him and his wife.
Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office spokesman Chang Wen-cheng (張文政) said that while Ma's monthly salary is about NT$150,000, he deposited NT$200,000 each month into his wife Chou Mei-chin's (周美青) bank account. This, Chang said, led prosecutors to suspect he was embezzling public funds.
Prosecutors added that Ma had included the money in his mandatory annual declaration of assets, but had failed to explain what legal basis he had for keeping public funds in a personal account.
Prosecutor Eric Chen (陳瑞仁) and Prosecutor Hou Kuan-jen (侯寬仁) of the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office' Black Gold Investigation Center have been put in charge of Ma's case. The prosecutors said they rejected the logic previously articulated by the Ministry of Justice that special allowances should be seen as a "substantial subsidy" for officials, the funds do not need to be properly accounted for.
Chen said prosecutors rejected the ministry's view that a "lenient approach" should be taken in investigations into special allowance funds.
However, Tainan prosecutors said they had taken the "substantial subsidy" view while probing Tainan Mayor and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member Hsu Tain-tsair's (
Tainan prosecutors closed Hsu's case on Monday and decided not to indict him. Hsu's former deputy mayor Hsu Yang-ming (
This led pan-blue lawmakers to question the fairness of the prosecutorial system, which seems to be setting different standards for different people.
Public Prosecutor-General Chen Tsung-ming (
Meanwhile, Ma yesterday expressed his confidence that his innocence would be proved and promised to appear in court on April 3.
"I am confident of my innocence. I've handled my mayoral allowance according to government regulations and this prosecution is therefore unfair. I will definitely appear in court to defend myself," Ma said in front of his temporary campaign office.
Commenting on the Tainan case, Ma said it proved that prosecutors made different interpretations on the proper use of special allowances which put the fairness of the system into doubt.
Additional reporting by Mo Yan-chih
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