A former major general and chief of staff of the army’s Hualien-Taitung Defense Command allegedly misappropriated about NT$6,000 from a fund intended to pay bonuses to soldiers participating in the annual Han Kuang military exercises, using the money to pay for a dinner for civilians, media reports said.
The Hualien branch of the Taiwan High Court sentenced the major general, surnamed Han (韓), to four years and six months in prison for corruption.
However, a review of the reports related to the case show that it is not so straightforward and involves a long-standing defect in the military.
The court’s judgement states that in July 2015, a lieutenant general surnamed Liu (劉), who was then a commanding officer, heard that family members of the political warfare director were coming to visit Hualien.
To honor them as guests in his capacity as a senior officer, he arranged a welcome banquet at a seafood restaurant in Hualien City, and invited Han to join them.
At the end of the evening, Han was left responsible for the bill.
Han denied embezzling funds and insisted that the charges were unfair.
“I was instructed by the commanding officer to pay for the meal out of the bonus payment fund,” he told the court. “The banquet was arranged by the commander’s office, and I was one of those invited. Before the meal, I did not know that the political warfare director’s relatives would attend.”
Having served in the armed forces for 10 years and having been in charge of a budget at the headquarters’ level, I remember similar events that occurred 30 years ago.
The recording of various items as “miscellaneous expenses,” such as wedding and funeral gifts, has long been common practice in the armed forces. Just as with state affairs expenses and special allowances used by government leaders, and the assistants’ fees that are payable to legislators and councilors, these expenditures can be processed and written off.
This is a “historical reality” of which Taiwanese are well aware. This practice remains deeply rooted and has not been eliminated regardless of which political party is in government.
Another reason a commanding officer would host a banquet for a subordinate and their family members, and invite a major general and chief of staff to join them, is that the major general would be left to “foot the bill.”
This tacit understanding that ranking officers can take advantage of their subordinates has been passed down from one generation to the next.
For a paltry sum of NT$6,000 that the lieutenant general surely could have paid himself, a major general chief of staff ends up in court, not to mention that an aide with the rank of sergeant was sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for three years.
It really is shameful for the nation’s armed forces. The entire meal and payment took place under the nose of the lieutenant general, but the High Court punished the handler — or should we call him the fall guy — while the one pulling the strings got off scot-free.
Fang Ping-sheng is a retired Republic of China Marine Corps major.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers