The Control Yuan on Tuesday impeached Lieutenant General Hu Chen-pu (胡鎮埔), a former Veterans Affairs Commission minister, for misappropriating funds earmarked for employee bonuses when he was director-general of the Ministry of National Defense’s Political Warfare Bureau.
Hu was the highest-ranking military officer to be impeached by the government watchdog in recent years.
The motion, initiated by Control Yuan members Liu Hsing-shan (劉興善) and Chou Yang-shan (周陽山), was passed by a vote of 9-to-3 in a confidential review meeting.
Hu was accused of implementing rules that contravened the Accounting Act (會計法) for a program to award bonuses to subordinates from a fund worth about NT$11 million (US$361,000) from Feb. 1, 2005, to Feb. 16, 2006.
The Control Yuan investigation showed that Hu also apparently collected NT$40,000 per month in the name of award recipients, for a total of NT$320,000.
During questioning, Hu told Control Yuan members that the money had been used to provide meals for the bureau and not for his personal use, but the Control Yuan ruled the practice constituted “malfeasance and irregularity.”
An investigation by the National Audit Office conducted prior to that by the Control Yuan found that Hu used the fund as a special allowance to buy off subordinates. It also said that most documents pertaining to how the money was used had been destroyed.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS