The People First Party (PFP) yesterday vowed to get to the bottom of a secret National Security Bureau account, but said it is not prepared to make any evidence public for the time being.
The party said it will wait for the release of a investigative report by the Control Yuan on the embezzlement case involving the bureau's former chief cashier, Colonel Liu Kuan-chun (
The PFP has alleged that money misappropriated by Liu was from that secret account, which allegedly contains a slush fund amassed from the surpluses of the bureau's annual budgets during Lee Teng-hui's (
Hsieh Chang-chieh (
Hsieh said the party is optimistic about discovering the truth, saying that the party's aggressive efforts to track the spending of the bureau's budgets has already yielded progress.
Hsieh said that as a result of the party's quest, the bureau has admitted it gave the Taiwan Research Institute, of which Lee is honorary chairman, an average of NT$20 million annually from the bureau's legal budget.
The PFP has alleged that the bureau channeled as much as NT$500 million from the secret account to the institute and that some of the money has since been transferred to various political groups associated with the former president.
Though it has confirmed the existence of the secret fund, the bureau has refused to disclose details of its spending.
The PFP is planning to raise a motion this week to establish an investigative panel in the legislature to conduct a thorough probe into the case.
Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯), chief executive of the DPP legislative caucus, said his caucus would support any move that would help bring the fund under proper monitoring.
The DPP proposes transferring the money to the National Security Bureau's legal budget or establishing a foundation to take over the fund to ensure transparency in its spending, Tsai said.
In response to PFP allegations that the National Security Bureau has numerous secret accounts, a member of the Control Yuan special committee investigating the alleged embezzlement by Liu said on Thursday that the Control Yuan would soon finalize its investigation report and disclose its details.
The source said the Control Yuan will verify its information with information in the hands of the PFP lawmakers before the report is officially released so as to ensure its credibility.
Although the PFP views Liu's case as just the tip of the iceberg, the Control Yuan has no plans to extend its investigations to other alleged secret bureau accounts unrelated to Liu's case, the source said.
The source said the other accounts in question are used to engage in several sensitive and confidential intelligence activities. Therefore, bureau officials, instead of delivering detailed account information to the Control Yuan, asked the special committee investigating the Liu case to look into the bureau's account information.
The source added Liu had the opportunity to embezzle the slush fund primarily because something went wrong with an internal control mechanism inside the bureau.
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