President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will testify before court if he is summoned for questioning over allegations that he received illicit political donations, Presidential Office spokesman Charles Chen (陳以信) said yesterday.
Ma has repeatedly denied the allegations and said he is confident of withstanding even the closest scrutiny, Chen said.
“People are obliged to take the stand, if necessary, and of course President Ma would cooperate with the investigation,” he said.
Photo: Chien Jung-feng, Taipei Times
Supreme Court Prosecutors’ Office Prosecutor-General Yen Da-ho (顏大和) on Wednesday said the need to question Ma would be contingent on what prosecutors discover during their investigation.
The Special Investigation Division (SID) in December last year began to investigate allegations by radio host Clara Chou (周玉蔻) that Ma accepted an off-the-book donation of NT$200 million (US$6.3 million) from Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際) during his re-election campaign in 2012 and separate allegations by political commentator Chen Min-feng (陳敏鳳) that at least 12 telecommunications and electronics magnates clandestinely donated a total of NT$200 million to Ma in 2007.
Pundits and opposition politicians accused Ma of being a “guardian angel” for Ting Hsin when the company was under fire following food scandals last year, because he had received large political donations from it.
“It’s not a problem of the possibility [of Ma being questioned] being excluded or not,” Yen said, in response to media inquiries, after Presidential Office Director Kang Bing-cheng (康炳政), Taiwan Lottery Co (台灣彩券) chairman Hsueh Hsiang-chuan (薛香川), Helm Technology (翰門企業) chairman Ni Chi-hsi (倪集熙) and former New Micropore (新長豐) chairman Wang Kung-chan (王公展) were questioned by the SID.
All four were released after questioning on Wednesday.
Political commentator Yao Li-ming (姚立明) alleged that illicit donations offered to Ma at a dinner in 2007 were handed to Kang. Yao described Kang, who he said has worked for Ma since 1984, as “a treasurer for Ma” and the president’s close confidant.
Several people have been questioned over the allegations, including Taiwan Memory Co (台灣記憶體公司) chairman John Hsuan (宣明智), senior Ting Hsin executive Wei Ying-chun (魏應充), Siliconware Precision Industries (矽品精密) chairman Bough Lin (林文伯), former People First Party legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (劉文雄), then-First International Telecom Corp (大眾電信) president Charlie Wu (吳清源) and former Chinese National Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文).
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification