The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) refused to give an approximate date yesterday on when Taiwan’s Swiss representative office would give a full report on why it failed to immediately forward a request for assistance from Swiss authorities regarding an alleged money-laundering case involving the former first family.
“I am not obliged to disclose any details regarding the investigation. We already asked the office to give a full report as soon as possible,” MOFA spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said.
Some critics said the ministry was inefficient because it appeared to only have questioned the representative office after media inquiries into the matter.
Chen later repeated to the Taipei Times that a report would come “as soon as possible,” adding that MOFA had demanded an explanation on the delay as soon it received the letter on July 25.
When asked why MOFA took six days before notifying the justice ministry about the request, Chen said that Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) made a verbal report to authorities immediately after receiving the letter from the Swiss office, but because of a three-day weekend caused by a typhoon, the official written report was not delivered to the Ministry of Justice until July 31.
Last Thursday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) made public a copy of the letter from Switzerland’s Federal Department of Justice and Police to Taiwan’s Swiss representative requesting information on deposits made to four Swiss bank accounts held by former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) son Chen Chih-chung (陳致中) and daughter-in-law Huang Jui-ching (黃睿靚).
Hung said the letter was sent to the representative office early last month and questioned why the office stalled for more than a week before sending it on to Taipei via regular postal mail rather than sending an urgent telegram.
Taiwan’s Swiss representative George Liu (劉寬平) had admitted full knowledge of the letter but denied accusations that he purposely delayed its delivery. He said that he didn’t send the letter immediately after receiving it on July 11 because he was busy with other business and he missed the weekly mail bag on July 16.
The MOFA said yesterday there were a number of ways for representative offices to communicate with Taipei.
“He [Liu] could have sent it via DHL or FedEx. He could have also informed the ministry right away through our secured fax line and telegram system,” a MOFA spokesman said.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
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More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
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