Kiribati said it has had problems in its internal management of aid funding received from Taiwan earlier this year and has promised to explain what has happened to the money, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said earlier this week.
Kiribati has also launched a judicial investigation into the missing funds and Interpol has become involved in the case, the ministry said in a statement.
“The Kiribati Government has taken the case very seriously” and has promised to inform Taiwan of the findings of the investigation as soon as possible, the ministry said, adding that once the information becomes available, it will be released to the public.
Ministry spokeswoman Anna Kao (高安) on Tuesday said that about A$1 million of a A$1.7 million (US$1.5 million) grant to the island nation in the central Pacific had gone missing.
Taiwan donated the funds to the nation of 100,000 people for the purchase of a landing craft to improve transportation.
“The money was wired to an overseas account, but apparently not that of the boat builder,” the Kiribati government was quoted as saying in the Kiribati Independent newspaper.
“The money has been stolen and there was nothing the government could do, but Kiribati police are now investigating,” Kiribati’s commerce, industry and cooperatives minister was quoted as saying in the report.
The ministry said that as soon as it learned about the problem earlier this month, it expressed concern to the ally and sought an explanation.
It was an isolated incident, the ministry said, adding that nonetheless it would work to keep better track of the nation’s aid to its allies.
Taiwan would stick to its principles on foreign aid programs — seeking proper goals, acting lawfully and exercising effective administration, the ministry said.
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