Citing insufficient evidence, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday said it would not press charges against Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) over allegations that he transferred donations made to the National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) into his personal account.
The announcement came after a 21-month investigation following allegations made by former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) during the mayoral election in 2014.
During the nine-in-one election campaign, Lo accused Ko, a former director of the NTUH’s Department of Traumatology, of pocketing donations made by individuals or medical equipment companies payable to the MG149 account that Ko set up to fund the department’s operation, by transferring the money to one of his private accounts.
Lo alleged that it was Ko who established the rules governing the MG149 account’s operation, which include giving certain physicians access to the account so they can launder money by making donations to the account and then withdrawing the money from the private account so as to reduce their tax burden.
Another rule allowed physicians to distribute 50 percent of the team’s surplus among themselves through individual accounts, Lo said at the time.
She also accused Ko of accepting kickbacks from manufacturers of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines.
The prosecutors’ office said that Ko can neither be considered a public servant as defined by the Criminal Code — because his team’s procurements did not pertain to public interests — nor an accountant who deals with procurements, and therefore it is unable to charge Ko with corruption.
The office said that both its own investigation and a raid of the hospital carried out by the Ministry of Education in 2014 found that members of Ko’s team had truthfully stated their purposes and provided invoices before being granted funds from the MG149 account.
It said that Ko’s private account was used to facilitate the department’s operation — for example, by covering fees when his team members made cash-advance requests for their research projects — adding that Ko’s rules stipulated that cash-advance grants must be repaid by the team’s members.
As to allegations that physicians were granted half of the department’s surplus for distribution among themselves, the office said that the portion of the surplus allocated for physicians was used for research purposes.
It said that after reviewing the department’s ledgers, it did not find evidence that physicians pocketed remnants of the grants they received.
When asked about the office’s decision, Lo said: “If things go on like this, Taiwan is screwed.”
As for Ko, he said the prosecutors’ decision was an indication that the nation is making progress.
“Thanks to the tests and battering Lo has put us through, Taiwan has become stronger,” Ko said.
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