The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said on Friday its representative office in Switzerland showed poor judgment in handling a letter requesting judicial assistance in a case of alleged money laundering involving members of the former first family.
An official from the ministry was referring to the representative office’s method of forwarding the letter from the Swiss authorities to MOFA. The official said that the representative office received the letter, dated June 16, early last month but the correspondence did not reach MOFA until late last month.
George Liu (劉寬平), Taiwan’s de facto representative to Switzerland, the Central News Agency said that the Swiss Department of Justice sent the letter to his office via ordinary mail and did not mark it as confidential.
Liu said he therefore forwarded the letter to MOFA via the ordinary mailing process, but unfortunately, it missed the weekly post and was delayed for another week.
In the letter, Swiss authorities requested judicial assistance in probing a case of possible money laundering by former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) son Chen Chih-chung (陳致中) and daughter-in-law Huang Jui-ching (黃睿靚).
The MOFA official said that the ministry, after listening to the explanations offered by Liu and other staff members, concluded that the letter had not been deliberately delayed, but that the representative office had shown a “lack of political judgment.”
The ministry announced late on Friday night that Liu would be replaced by Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Hsieh Fa-dah (謝發達).
Liu, a former Taiwan Solidarity Union legislator, offered to resign in June and tendered a written resignation to Foreign Affairs Minister Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) late last month.
Other personnel reshuffles included the appointment of former representative to Fiji Liu Fu-tien (劉富添) as the new representative to the Federal Republic of Nigeria, representative to Mongolia Liu Chih-kung (劉志攻) as the representative to the Czech Republic and director of Taipei Liaison Office in Johannesburg Lee Ming-liang (李明亮) as the representative to Turkey.
An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible. It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor. The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰)
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