Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Secretary-General Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said yesterday the party would postpone making public its investigative report into KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) alleged misuse of his mayoral special allowance fund during his eight-year term as Taipei mayor.
Wu said a special investigative team under the party's Integrity Committee had not completely concluded its investigation and it was therefore unlikely it would announce the results this week.
The team was established on Nov. 20 to investigate embezzlement allegations made by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators and Taipei City councilors against Ma.
The committee promised at the time that the team would complete and publicize the investigation's results by Jan. 17 this year.
Prosecutor Hou Kuan-jen's (侯寬仁) investigation into the case is also yet to be concluded.
When approached by reporters yesterday, Wu said: "On the one hand, the party's Integrity Committee has not yet finalized the report, so there is no problem as to when the results will be publicized. We also took into account that people may think we were trying to mislead or influence the prosecutors' investigation [into the case] by publicizing our report earlier than the prosecutors."
However, he did not specify when the report would be made public, but added that Ma should not be indicted in the case and if he were, the charges would be wrong.
Wu's comments drew immediate criticism yesterday from DPP legislators. DPP caucus whip Yeh Yi-chin (葉宜津) said Wu was trying to influence prosecutors' judgment of the case by saying that indicting Ma would be wrong.
Another DPP caucus whip, Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻), said Wu's comments would constitute interference with the judicial system if it turned out that Ma was not indicted.
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