A diplomatic middleman in Taiwan’s failed bid to forge diplomatic ties with Papua New Guinea in 2006 was indicted yesterday on breach of trust charges.
Prosecutors recommended that Wu Shih-tsai (吳思材), who is serving time in a local jail for other offenses, be given a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence for embezzling US$29.8 million in government funds along with his accomplice.
The Taipei District Prosecutors Office said in the indictment that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) wired the money into a joint account held by Wu and Ching Chi-ju (金紀玖) in a Singapore bank in September 2006 to be used to facilitate the establishment of diplomatic ties between Taiwan and the Pacific country.
The diplomatic bid failed, but the duo did not return the funds to the ministry, which found out later that the funds had been completely withdrawn from the bank account in November and December that year.
Wu was arrested when the scandal came to light at the end of then-president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) second term in May 2008, but Ching managed to flee to the US.
Because the case involved confidential information, the prosecutors office did not reveal details of the results of its investigation in accordance with provisions of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法).
They would only say that Wu was indicted for breach of trust because he siphoned off government funds after failing to fulfill his mission.
Because Wu is a civilian with no official function, he can only be indicted under the Criminal Code, rather than the Anti-Corruption Act (貪汙治罪條例) that mainly applies to corrupt dealings by public functionaries, prosecutors said.
They also asked the court to freeze any funds in Wu’s bank accounts and confiscate all real--estate holdings under his name.
The government has pursued other means to recover the -embezzled funds. In a civil suit filed in Singapore by MOFA, a Singaporean court ruled that Taiwan was entitled to the sum of US$29.8 million plus interest earned on the account between the deposit date and the verdict date.
A ministry statement issued last May said it believed that at least US$10.52 million of the lost funds could be retrieved, pointing to the US$6 million frozen in a Singapore account in Ching’s name and the US$3 million in a Singapore account held by Wu.
The ministry has successfully retrieved about US$7 million of the lost funds to date.
Wu is presently serving time in a Taiwan jail after he was convicted in October 2008 on charges of forgery and making false accusations related to the Papua New Guinea case and on an unrelated cigarette smuggling charge.
He was sentenced to 30 months in jail and began serving the sentence in May 2009.
Ching is on the wanted list. Prosecutors said investigations of other suspects in the case, including former National Security Council secretary-general Chiou I-jen (邱義仁) and former foreign minister James Huang (黃志芳), are still ongoing.
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