My neighbor recently asked me: “Why did the court find Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) not guilty of fraudulently claiming assistant fees?”
I said that the appellate court judges held that although Kao did indeed “underpay and overreport” assistants’ salaries, which created a discrepancy of about NT$110,000 in provident funds, she paid more than NT$150,000 out of her own pocket to privately hired assistants.
Moreover, the court characterized assistant fees as essentially a subsidy for legislators to be “flexibly allocated” at their discretion, so it did not constitute corruption. Therefore, I concluded, they ruled that the only offense committed was causing a public official to make false entries in public documents.
Exasperated, my neighbor asked that if the money is for legislators anyway, why not just be open about it all? Why bother falsifying documents with all this underpaying and overreporting?
I was stunned for a moment. His logic got to the very heart of the matter, exposing the central contradiction of the High Court’s position, which acknowledged that Kao broke the law by knowingly inflating reported assistant fees, but still concluded that it did not constitute corruption.
In Article 214 of the Criminal Code, a key element is that the person in question causes a public official to make an entry in a public document which the person “knows to be false,” implying direct criminal intent.
Therefore, by convicting Kao of this offense, the judges acknowledged that she knew her “underpaying but overreporting” to be illegal, and that she sought to fraudulently obtain funds from the Legislative Yuan.
After the High Court’s ruling, which reinterpreted the purpose of assistant fees, the public realized what game was being played. Kao never needed to tiptoe around and risk charges of document falsification by inflating assistant fees; she simply could have “flexibly reallocated” the funds as she pleased — whether it be for salon expenses or double-eyelid tape.
The very same assistant budget system that was originally designed to safeguard public funds has now been redefined by the interpretation of a few individual judges. Its new designation of a “flexibly allocable subsidy” has flipped what would have been a charge for the serious crime of corruption to a minor offense of document falsification — and it is at the cost of public trust in the judiciary.
Yeh Yu-cheng is a secretary at the Pingtung County Public Health Bureau.
Translated by Gilda Knox Streader
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