The Control Yuan released a report yesterday on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' (MOFA) donation to South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) under Nelson Mandela in 1994.
The Control Yuan said that based on its task force's investigation, the ministry borrowed from a National Security Bureau (NSB) sectret fund to give a donation to the ANC, and, when the ministry reimbursed the NSB, it paid more than the amount of the original loan.
The Control Yuan blamed flawed accounting procedures for the discrepancy.
"The case came to the attention of the public because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported a different amount for the donation from the amount the ministry reimbursed to the National Security Bureau. After a comprehensive investigation, we found the gap resulted from unclear accounting procedures," Chao Ron-yaw (
Chao and his colleague, Ma Yi-kung (
The case was investigated after the media revealed that the money donated to the ANC came from an NSB secret fund which was handled by Liu Kuan-chun (劉冠軍), the former NSB chief cashier who fled the country in September 2000 after allegedly embezzling NT$190 million from NSB funds.
Since the amount of money donated was not clear, it prompted speculation among reporters that irregularities were involved.
According to the report, the correct amount of the donation was US$10.32 million, which the NSB advanced to the MOFA to give to the ANC. In 1999, however, the MOFA reimbursed the NSB US$10.7 million.
"The NSB sent the MOFA an advance in 1998 for another diplomatic purpose, but the MOFA listed the expenditure under the same accounting title as the ANC donation, and that is how the gap resulted," said Ma.
Control Yuan members thus concluded in their report that the MOFA's accounting procedure did have flaws and that the MOFA should not borrow money from the NSB because the NSB's slush fund is not supervised by the Legislative Yuan.
The MOFA made the donation because former president Lee Teng-hui (
The MOFA, however, did not budget for the donation in 1994.
Chao said, the MOFA should have followed the government's standard procedure to draw on existing reserves rather than borrow money from the NSB, said Chao.
He added, "we hope that the MOFA will improve its accounting procedures."
The Control Yuan is still investigating the flow of money from the secret NSB accounts to see whether irregularities were involved.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
President William Lai (賴清德) today called for greater mutual aid between Taiwan and Japan in a post commemorating the 15th anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, saying that “true friendship reveals itself in hardship.” The magnitude 9 earthquake, the largest ever recorded in Japan, and the ensuing tsunami left 18,500 people dead or unaccounted for, and caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. It was the world's worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Japan and Taiwan share a close bond built on mutual aid and trust, Lai said on Facebook, adding that he hopes they would
RSS