National Taiwan University president-elect Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) received hundreds of thousands of New Taiwan dollars writing articles for a magazine during his time as a minister without portfolio, said sources familiar with the matter, who spoke to the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) on condition of anonymity.
He received about NT$600,000 per year, or NT$50,000 per month on average, they said.
The sources said the money was payment for the articles he had written for the Chinese-language Next Magazine.
However, the Control Yuan is investigating whether the payments contravened the Civil Servant Work Act (公務員服務法), the sources said.
A group claiming to be Kuan’s legal team yesterday released a statement saying that media reports about the matter were inaccurate.
Kuan did occasionally write articles for the publication at its request during his time in public office, but each year he reported this source of income for tax purposes, it said.
Government officials’ additional sources of income need to be reported to and approved by the Executive Yuan and cannot surpass NT$17,000 per month, an anonymous source from a government personnel office said on Tuesday.
While government officials are not forbidden from writing for publications, they typically only write one or two articles on occasion, they said.
According to Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 11, civil servants cannot hold concurrent posts as reporters or employees of newspapers or magazines, said an academic, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
If, because of their jobs, civil servants must submit articles or letters to the media to express a government agency’s stance or clarify an issue, they should still abide by the regulations in the act, they said.
Kuan’s partnership with the media needs to be confirmed, lawyer Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎) said.
If the publication made regular payments to Kuan, the situation might not be as simple as a reader submitting a letter or a publication asking someone to write an article for it, he said.
If Kuan was required to submit a certain number of articles per week, he could be considered a part-time employee at the publication, which would have contravened the regulation prohibiting civil servants from holding other positions, he added.
Kuan served as minister without portfolio from 2012 to 2015, Council for Economic Planning and Development minister from 2013 to 2014 and National Development Council minister from 2014 to 2015.
The Ministry of Education said it had been unaware of Kuan’s allegedly illegal work with the magazine, Deputy Minister of Education Lin Teng-chiao (林騰蛟) said yesterday, adding that the ministry would ask the university to investigate the matter if it received any formal complaint.
Additional reporting by Ann Tu
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