A recent proposal to relieve top officials who have allegedly misused special funds of legal liability will not affect investigations currently being conducted by the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors’ Office’s Special Investigation Section (SIS), an official said yesterday.
SIS Spokesman Chen Yun-nan (陳雲南) made the remarks yesterday in response to a proposal by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Lin Yi-shih (林益世), who said on Friday that he plans to propose legislation that would relieve government chiefs — except for the president — of liability for misusing their special allowance fund.
The draft bill would state that the use of special allowance funds by all government chiefs and deputy chiefs until the end of 2006 should be considered legal, and that any charges of forgery and other criminal violations related to using the funds prior to Dec. 31, 2006, should be dropped, Lin said.
Chen said yesterday that if the proposed amendment is passed and becomes effective, whoever was being investigated by prosecutors at that time would not be indicted and their cases would be closed. However, government chiefs indicted before the draft becomes law would have to go through the usual judicial process.
While declining to disclose the total number of cases related to special allowances, Chen said the SIS prosecutors have divided all of these cases into two categories.
The first category involves Cabinet members who served under the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government and the second category is composed of Cabinet members who served under the previous KMT government.
Investigations into the portion of cases concerning the DPP are almost complete, he said, declining to give more details citing a gag order.
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