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Court allows key document in Ma trial

A supporter of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate and former Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou holds up a model horse (ma in Chinese) to show his support outside the Taipei Prosecutor's Office yesterday. PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES

The Taipei District Court yesterday agreed to allow a key piece of evidence that bolsters former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) defense in his corruption trial.

In November last year, the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) issued a statement saying that government officials' special allowances should be treated as personal income.

Presiding Judge Tsai Shou-hsun's (蔡守訓) decision during the third hearing in Ma's case yesterday supports the claims of the defendant.

Ma is on trial for allegedly misusing a special allowance fund during his eight-year tenure as mayor. He has not contested that he had taken the special allowance for personal use.

Corruption

The MOJ statement said the special allowance fund should be seen as a "substantial subsidy" to officials, which immediately sparked criticism from some Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, who have accused Ma of corruption.

The MOJ has since kept silent on the issue.

"The ministry did not know whether the special mayoral fund former Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou was accused of embezzling should be classified as public or private," Minister of Justice Morley Shih (施茂林) told a legislative meeting on April 23.

But when DPP legislators pointed to a ministry press statement issued on April 18, which said that "the ministry regards the special funds as public funds," Vice Minister of Justice Chu Nan (朱楠) told the meeting that he was in charge of the press statement, and that the use of the wording "public funds" was an error and did not represent the ministry's position on the issue.

Ma's lawyer, Song Yao-ming (宋耀明), yesterday told the court that the MOJ's usage of the phrase "substantial subsidy" could be used as evidence to prove Ma's innocence.

Prosecutors took issue with the claim.

"The `substantial subsidy' announcement was elaborated on by MOJ officials and was their personal opinion, it does not represent the MOJ's position on the issue," Prosecutor Hou Shao-ching (侯少卿) told the court yesterday.

"I used to be the minister of justice, and I know that such an official ministry statement represents the minister and the ministry's position on the issue, and that it is impossible that it is just an official's personal opinion," Ma told the judges.

The judge then ruled that the ministry's announcement could be used as evidence in the trial.

Ma stands accused of embezzling NT$11 million [US$333,000] and was indicted on Feb. 13 on corruption charges.

Prosecutors found that between December 1998 and last July, Ma wired half of his monthly special allowance -- NT$170,000 -- directly to a personal account. They also found that Ma had NT$11,176,227 in bank accounts belonging to him and his wife.

Ma treated the money as a personal asset on his annual property and income statement.
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