Yesterday’s indictment of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) for misappropriation of public funds revealed a donation of 40 million South African rand (then worth US$10.5 million) given by Taiwan to then-South African president Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress (ANC).
For reasons of confidentiality prosecutors blacked out the name of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, the ANC and other details in the indictment, despite the events being depicted in a memoir by Loh I-cheng (陸以正), then the country’s ambassador to South Africa.
According to the indictment, Lee decided to donate the money to the ANC to consolidate Taiwan’s diplomatic relationship with South Africa when he attended Mandela’s inauguration in May 1994.
Mandela announced on Nov. 28 1996, that South Africa, Taiwan’s biggest diplomatic ally at that time, would recognize Beijing by the end of 1997, ending the country’s 21-year relationship with Taipei.
The indictment indicates that Lee instructed then-minister of foreign affairs Fredrick Chien (錢復) to talk to the then-head of the National Security Bureau (NSB) Yin Tsung-wen (殷宗文) to borrow the money needed for the donation from the Feng Tien Project if the ministry needed assistance meeting the payment.
To make up for the money loaned to the ministry from the Feng Tien Project, Yin appropriated a total of NT$192.635 million (US$6.7 million) from the NSB’s budget from 1995 and 1997, with the consent of Lee, the statement said.
Lee, Yin, and Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英), a close associate of Lee, were charged by prosecutors with embezzling a total of US$7.797 million to establish the Taiwan Research Institute, the Lee-affiliated think tank, by again using the Feng Tien Project slush fund.
After the NSB repaid NT$192.635 million into the fund, it was just NT$89.409 million short, but Lee, Yin, and Liu decided that the ministry should still return the US$10.5 million borrowed.
The indictment said that in 1998, Yin asked then-minister of foreign affairs Jason Hu (胡志強) to return the money several times at National Security Council meetings, while Lee also asked chief presidential secretary Su Chih-cheng (蘇志誠) to encourage Hu to make the repayment.
Hu later signed off on a document that the ministry returned US$10.7 million to the NBS on Sept. 25, 1998 — US$10.5 million to cover the donation and US$200,000 for another project.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching