Five former ministers under the previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration were indicted by the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office yesterday on charges of misusing funds.
They are former justice minister Morley Shih (施茂林), former minister of the interior Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋), former education minister Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝), former minister of examinations Lin Chia-cheng (林嘉誠) and former minister of the civil service Chu Wu-hsien (朱武獻).
Chen Yun-nan (陳雲南), a spokesman for the Supreme Prosecutors Office’s Special Investigation Panel, said that a subordinate to Tu, two subordinates to Shih and another to Lee were also indicted on charges of collecting fraudulent receipts for the ministers.
Chen said the five former ministers were suspected of using fraudulent receipts to claim reimbursements from their special allowance funds in violation of the Criminal Code.
Prosecutors alleged that Tu used a number of fraudulent receipts to claim reimbursements amounting to NT$360,000 (US$12,000), Shih NT$180,000, Lee NT$40,000, Lin NT$610,000 and Chu NT$65,000.
Chen said prosecutors were still investigating officials from the previous Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government for their use of discretionary funds, among them then premier Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) and then vice premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄). Siew is now the vice president and Liu the premier.
The KMT legislative caucus last May filed a suit with the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, asking the prosecutors to investigate ministers in the DPP government’s use of discretionary funds.
The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office last September indicted former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), former DPP chairman Yu Shyi-kun and former National Security Council secretary-general Mark Chen (陳唐山) on suspicion of misusing their special allowance funds.
Lu, Yu and Chen were charged with corruption and forgery. Their cases are pending in the Taipei District Court.
At a press conference yesterday, DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said the prosecutors only chose to indict former DPP officials, claiming political considerations were involved in the investigation.
“Prosecutors investigate green officials and avoid those who are blue,” Cheng said, calling on justice authorities and the legislature to swiftly provide a regulation on discretionary fund to solve the controversy “because in the past it has been an unwritten rule that officials have flexibility when spending their special allowance fund.”
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