The Control Yuan recently set up an electronic system to provide politicians a convenient way to check the eligibility of people who offer political contributions.
“Currently, receivers of contributions need to check with more than 41 government agencies to find out whether a donor is eligible to give a political donation,” Control Yuan Secretary-General Chen Feng-yi (陳豐義) told a press conference yesterday. “With the system now set up, they can just do a search by accessing the Control Yuan’s Web site.”
The system will go into effect on Tuesday, he said.
Article 7 of the Political Donation Act (政治獻金法) says politicians cannot accept donations from state-owned enterprises, private businesses in which the government holds more than 20 percent of their capital, religious groups and party-owned businesses, among others.
Politicians found guilty of accepting such contributions can be fined between NT$200,000 and NT$1 million.
Chen said that the Control Yuan spent several months working with government agencies to establish an integrated data system listing which individuals, institutions and enterprises are ineligible to contribute.
The information is available free of charge.
The system can also help the Control Yuan reduce the time that it spends checking for irregularities in political donations, Chen said.
The system will also decrease the delivery time of documents between different government agencies to investigate irregularities, Chen said.
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