Former Tainan Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) deputy mayor Hsu Yang-ming (
"Hsu Yang-ming was found to have used 130 fraudulent receipts, worth more than NT$310,000 [US$9,375], to reimburse himself from his special allowance funds," Kuo Chen-ni (郭珍妮), a spokeswoman for the Tainan District Prosecutors' Office told a press conference yesterday.
She said Hsu Yang-ming was charged with corruption adding that Hsu Tain-tsair had not been found to have used any receipts fraudulently to reimburse funds from his special allowance funds.
Tainan prosecutors said they did not probe the Hsus' handling of monthly allowance funds that did not require accounting oversight because the pair took this in cash and it was impossible to probe whether that money had been spent on private or public matters.
Hsu Yang-ming (
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Tainan City Councilor Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) filed a suit against both Hsus last November, accusing them of using fraudulent receipts to seek reimbursements from their special allowance funds and depositing part of their allowances into their personal bank accounts.
Prosecutors also indicted Wang Hsiao-fang (
Prosecutors said Hsu Yang-ming also took nine receipts, worth more than NT$30,000, from his wife to reimburse funds but that she had no knowledge of this.
Prosecutor Eric Chen (陳瑞仁) told reporters yesterday that he had read legal documents relating to the Hsus and found no difference between the investigations into President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) handling of his special discretionary fund, that of former Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), and that of the Hsus.
He said in all cases, prosecutors did not probe officials handling of allowance funds not requiring accounting oversight if they took the funds in cash.
He said Ma was indicted for depositing these funds into his personal accounts, which prosecutors considered corrupt.
Hsu, however, accused the judiciary of applying double standards in its dealing with his special allowance case.
At a press conference at the legislature yesterday, Hsu said prosecutors discriminated against him by applying a rigid criterion in deciding which of his expenditures could be counted as official spending.
For example, he said, prosecutors regarded money spent on a gathering with reporters from Tainan during his stay in Kaohsiung as personal expenditure while this should be considered official expenditure.
"My gifts to civil groups in Taipei were also taken as personal expense while actually they were not," Hsu said, citing another example, while showing the press copies of the indictment.
Hsu said he also gave prosecutors lists of the people he had given gifts to but prosecutors did not question any of them.
"There would be no problem with me by the standards of Hou Kuan-jen (侯寬仁) [who indicted Ma on corruption charges last month]," Hsu said, referring to the judiciary's statement last month that Hou had tried to screen every receipt presented by Ma by a less stringent standard before indicting him.
He said that the amount of money he spent on official expenditure outweighed his special allowance and this proved that he had no intention of embezzling the allowance.
"I accidentally misreported some receipts for small amounts of money, but I explained the circumstances clearly to the prosecutors," he said, adding that he knew nothing about other problematic receipts presented by his secretary and staffers in the case.
"This is a political problem, not a judicial one," he said.
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