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More charges slapped on ex-president
IMPECCABLE TIMING: The ex-president’s office
questioned the SID’s motives in laying charges for the illegal seizure of
official documents a day after Ma’s second inauguration
By Stacy Hsu / Staff writer, with CNA
Supreme Prosecutors’ Office
Special Investigation Division spokesman Chen Hung-ta yesterday displays the
indictment charging former president Chen Shui-bian with illegally seizing
confidential government documents.
Photo: CNA
Special prosecutors yesterday indicted
former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) for illegally seizing confidential
government documents, the latest in a series of charges facing Chen, who is
already serving a jail sentence for corruption.
Chen was indicted on the charge of violating the Classified National Security
Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special
Investigation Division (SID) members said.
However, because Chen never released any of the documents to the public,
prosecutors recommended that the court give the former president a relatively
light sentence proportionate to the crime.
According to the indictment, Chen ordered close aides to pack and transport
important documents from national security agencies, the Ministry of National
Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to his personal office in Taipei
after the March presidential election in 2008, when Chen’s Democratic
Progressive Party was voted out of power.
Prosecutors said that after searches, inspectors discovered the former president
had taken more than 17,000 documents, 3,419 of which were classified.
SID inspectors questioned people linked to the case 43 times and Chen himself at
Taipei Prison, where he has been serving a 17-and-a-half-year sentence since
late 2010.
While Chen told prosecutors he did not know how his aides handled the documents
and that as president he had the right to destroy them, prosecutors said in the
indictment it was against the law for him not to return the documents after
leaving office on May 20, 2008.
The prosecutors alleged that Chen kept the documents for several reasons — to
help him write a planned memoir and prepare for lawsuits in which he was
involved and to collect evidence against other politicians.
The former president’s office yesterday afternoon called the indictment
ridiculous and unfounded, adding that the fact that it was made one day after
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) inauguration raised serious questions about the
SID’s motives. Chen’s office denied having done anything illegal and called for
the abolishment of the SID, saying it was unworthy of the public.
Chen’s attorney, Cheng Wen-lung (鄭文龍), described the indictment as “political
suppression.”
Cheng said the SID should be cracking down on irregularities involving incumbent
government officials rather than on the former president, citing problems
related to the production of an expensive musical, called Dreamers (夢想家), for
the Republic of China centennial celebration last year, as well as the 2010
Taipei International Flora Expo.
Cheng also said that because the office of a former president is also defined as
a public institution, Chen’s action could simply be described as moving the
files from one public institution to another.
“It does not involve illegal conduct or corruption,” he said.
Additional reporting by Lee Hsin-fang
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