Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators panned the government yesterday over its appointment of Shen Lyu-shun (沈呂巡) — who has been accused of involvement in an embezzlement scandal — as deputy minister of foreign affairs.
“It doesn’t make any sense that someone who makes a mistake isn’t punished, but is instead promoted,” DPP Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) told a press conference at the Legislative Yuan yesterday.
“Apparently, if you have connections, you won’t have any trouble,” she said, referring to the fact that Shen was President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) high school classmate.
DPP Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) said that Shen had jeopardized the “clean political standards” set by Ma.
The comments came after the latest issue of Next Magazine alleged that Shen, currently Taiwan’s representative to the EU, embezzled more than NT$4 million (US$123,000) by inflating office rent figures to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) during his term as head of Taiwan’s representative office in Geneva from 2003 to last year.
The magazine reported that Shen forced the landlord to sign a forged contract showing an inflated rental agreement and sent the forged contract to Taipei.
The scandal was discovered by MOFA last year, and Shen received two demerits as a penalty, the magazine said.
DPP spokesman Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟), also accused the government of applying double standards when it comes to investigating scandals.
“It seems that anyone on good terms with Ma or who is close to the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] is exempt from prosecution, while anyone affiliated with the DPP or who served as an official when the DPP was in power will be pursued by the judiciary,” he said.
MOFA deputy spokesman James Chang (章計平) rebutted the allegations.
“In fact, it was the landlord that provided false information about the surface area of the office space and overcharged for rent,” Chang told reporters at a press conference. “Shen actually only found out about it in February 2007 and he informed the ministry right away and began to negotiate with the landlord at the same time.”
After negotiations, the landlord agreed to make up the difference by reducing the rent, Chang said.
A probe launched by MOFA that concluded in May last year found that Shen had not embezzled the funds, he said.
“However, we still think that Shen committed an administrative error because he failed to fulfill his duty of overseeing everything carefully, so we issued him two demerits,” Chang said.
When asked by the Taipei Times whether his appointment was appropriate since Shen would have a greater duty in overseeing MOFA operations as deputy minister, Chang said that it should not be a problem because Shen handled the issue well.
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