Former presidential adviser Wu Li-pei (吳澧培) said yesterday that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had told him and several other pro-independence stalwarts that he was forced to show receipts on the use of a special fund because "the outside world was accusing me as if I were a suspect of embezzlement."
Wu said he and former senior advisers Koo Kwang-ming (
Wu said Chen showed them receipts on how he had used the special state affairs fund to "prove his innocence," and "we believe he is innocent."
If any violations of the law have taken place, they should be handled by the judicial authorities, they said.
Last Tuesday, the Ministry of Audit said the administration had refused to present sufficient information for auditors to verify the legality of the expenditures from the NT$48 million (US$1.46 million) president's special allowance fund.
The watchdog agency said there might have been irregularities in Chen's usage of the fund.
WANG WEIGHS IN
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
"I don't know what the president has shown to other people, but what I was shown was all confidential information," Wang said.
"If there is disclosure [of the receipts], it will be bad for the entire nation, and be harmful to the persons [who requested the reimbursement]," he said.
Wang said that some people and things related to a nation's diplomacy should be kept secret, noting that he hoped whoever had seen the classified information would keep what they learned confidential.
Wang made the remarks in response to reporters' questions about whether Chen's publicizing the receipts would hurt former president Lee Teng-hui (
According to Wang, among the receipts shown to him were documents indicating how Lee used the special fund from 1994 to 2000.
"On the documents about Lee's reimbursement, I saw the names [of those requesting reimbursement], the code numbers [of their diplomatic tasks] and the amounts," Wang said.
He refused to compare the way in which Lee and Chen used the special fund, saying "maybe Chen has his own way."
Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) caucus whip David Huang (
"It's beyond our capacity to determine whether the receipts the president showed us were legal or not," he said.
He said that the president had taken the opportunity to express his great respect for Lee, praising his predecessor for having "institutionalized" the "Feng Tien" and "Tang Yang" projects for conducting "secret diplomacy."
OPINION POLL
Meanwhile, according to a survey released yesterday by Global Vews Monthly, a total of 53.1 percent of the public think that Chen should give the public a complete explanation about the corruption allegations against the first family and answer reporters' questions about the scandals.
The survey found that 62 percent of respondents did not believe Chen's explanation of how he has spent the special state affairs fund, and only 18.2 believe him.
Among pan-green camp respondents, 53.8 percent said they believed Chen's explanation, while 26.5 percent did not.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS