For decades, the military has been secretly providing financial assistance to political dissidents and rebel forces in China via various channels, defense sources said yesterday.
The Ministry of National Defense is the prime source of these secret funds, while the National Security Bureau (NSB) has also played an important role in the affair.
Before it lost power two years ago, the KMT provided another channel for the secret funds to reach the designated Chinese recipients.
There is no information available as to how much money Taiwan has spent to assist Chinese dissidents and rebel forces.
But the defense ministry alone may have spent over NT$500 million for the purpose over the past two decades.
Starting in the early 1980s, the ministry has had a secret allocation fund of over NT$100 million a year to be distributed to Chinese recipients, sources said.
The allocation is hidden in the annual budget of a branch of the office of the chief of the general staff, who deals with foreign affairs.
This branch can remit the secret funds to overseas representative offices of the military in a third country, which would then give the money to the designated recipients via the help of a third party.
The practice was continued for years without any major problems, at least on the record.
The secret allocation for the Chinese recipients was initially over NT$100 million per year but has been reduced to several million NT dollars a year.
The money that the NSB and the KMT (before 2000), contributed to the funds is also difficult to estimate because of the lack of available documents.
The bureau is known to have used a different method from that of the ministry in channeling the funds out of the country. What exactly that method is has not been identified
The KMT used to use its overseas branches or front organizations as covers to distribute secret funds.
The amount of funds channeled out of the country via KMT overseas branches and front organizations could be much more than the amount spent by the defense ministry since the KMT at the time had access to almost all of the assets of the government at the time and had a lot of money at its disposal.
A defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the secret funding to Chinese dissidents and rebel forces could be traced back to 1960s, during the rule of the late president Chiang Kai-shek (
"Chiang authorized, at the time, the establishment of some front organizations such as the Asian People's Anti-Communist League or later the World Anti-Communist League to carry out these secret operations," the official said.
"Chiang's motive was obviously to overturn the Chinese communist regime and recover the mainland he lost to the communists," he said.
Actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) has “returned home” to Taiwan, and there are no plans to hold a funeral for the TV star who died in Japan from influenza- induced pneumonia, her family said in a statement Wednesday night. The statement was released after local media outlets reported that Barbie Hsu’s ashes were brought back Taiwan on board a private jet, which arrived at Taipei Songshan Airport around 3 p.m. on Wednesday. To the reporters waiting at the airport, the statement issued by the family read “(we) appreciate friends working in the media for waiting in the cold weather.” “She has safely returned home.
A Vietnamese migrant worker on Thursday won the NT$12 million (US$383,590) jackpot on a scratch-off lottery ticket she bought from a lottery shop in Changhua County’s Puyan Township (埔鹽), Taiwan Lottery Co said yesterday. The lottery winner, who is in her 30s and married, said she would continue to work in Taiwan and send her winnings to her family in Vietnam to improve their life. More Taiwanese and migrant workers have flocked to the lottery shop on Sec 2 of Jhangshuei Road (彰水路) to share in the luck. The shop owner, surnamed Chen (陳), said that his shop has been open for just
Global bodies should stop excluding Taiwan for political reasons, President William Lai (賴清德) told Pope Francis in a letter, adding that he agrees war has no winners. The Vatican is one of only 12 countries to retain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and Taipei has watched with concern efforts by Beijing and the Holy See to improve ties. In October, the Vatican and China extended an accord on the appointment of Catholic bishops in China for four years, pointing to a new level of trust between the two parties. Lai, writing to the pope in response to the pontiff’s message on Jan. 1’s
MUST REMAIN FREE: A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would lead to a global conflict, and if the nation blows up, the world’s factories would fall in a week, a minister said Taiwan is like Prague in 1938 facing Adolf Hitler; only if Taiwan remains free and democratic would the world be safe, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) said in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The ministry on Saturday said Corriere della Sera is one of Italy’s oldest and most read newspapers, frequently covers European economic and political issues, and that Wu agreed to an interview with the paper’s senior political analyst Massimo Franco in Taipei on Jan. 3. The interview was published on Jan. 26 with the title “Taiwan like Prague in 1938 with Hitler,” the ministry
RSS