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President unveils
agency meant to fight corruption
FEARS: To test the neutrality of the agency, DPP
officials have put forward a list of 10 potential corruption cases that involve
President Ma and Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin
By Rich Chang and Chris Wang / Staff Reporters
President Ma Ying-jeou speaks
during a ceremony in Taipei on July 20, 2011 to inaugurate a special
anti-corruption body called Agency Against Corruption. Ma inaugurated an
anti-corruption body modelled on Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against
Corruption, renewing a pledge of clean government that helped bring him to power
more than three years ago.
Photo: AFP
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
caucus whip Tsai Huang-liang, center, holds official letters of complaint
against President Ma Ying-jeou and Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin at a press
conference held with DPP legislators Huang Wei-che, left, and Chen Ting-fei in
Taipei yesterday. The complaints will be submitted to the newly established
Agency Against Corruption.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday
vowed to rid the nation of corruption at a ceremony marking the establishment of
the Agency Against Corruption (AAC), while the opposition cast doubt on the
neutrality of the new agency.
“After the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Panel [SIP]
revealed a serious scandal involving several Taiwan High Court judges, I decided
to establish the nation’s first anti-corruption agency,” Ma told the ceremony.
The purpose of the AAC is to prevent corruption, because prevention should
precede crackdowns, he said, adding that its creation should deter public
servants from engaging in corrupt activities.
“As the agency investigates corruption cases, one precondition is that it must
collect sufficient evidence [of corruption] before it makes an indictment [of a
public servant],” Ma said, adding that this should increase the conviction rate.
Ma said public servants who find themselves under criminal investigation would
see their reputation severely jeopardized. Their families would feel the impact,
spouses would not want to go to work and children would be afraid to go to
school, Ma said, adding that because of this, the agency must be careful and
precise in how it conducts investigations.
In the early days of Transparency International, a non--governmental
organization that publishes a global ranking of countries based on their level
of corruption each year, Taiwan ranked No. 25, Ma said.
“Taiwan’s worst ranking was 39th place, but it has improved to 33rd place,” Ma
said. “I have found that the top 10 countries in the ranking are all
well-developed and highly competitive — and integrity is tantamount to
competition.”
Turning to criticism that the AAC, which falls under the Ministry of Justice,
does not have the power to carry out investigations against senior government
bureaus and their officials and that it should have been made part of the
Presidential Office or the Executive Yuan, as is the case in Singapore and Hong
Kong, Ma said those fears were the result of a misunderstanding.
“Taiwanese prosecutors are only law enforcement officers who conduct criminal
prosecution,” Ma said. “The AAC is headed by a number of prosecutors, so no
matter where the agency is located or its level of authority, prosecutors can
bring the cases to court without political pressure.”
The agency will investigate -corruption-related crimes and supervise the ethics
divisions of various government agencies.
The AAC will be headquartered in Taipei and will have three branches in Taipei,
Greater Taichung and Greater Kaohsiung, with a total staff of 240 people.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus yesterday said it feared the new
agency could represent a “second wind for the SIP, which has become a tool for
the current administration to carry out political oppression.”
“We want to know whether the agency is for real, so the DPP has collected
information on 10 [potential] corruption cases involving President Ma, who
served as Taipei mayor in [some of] the cases, as well as Taipei Mayor Hau
Lung-bin (郝龍斌),” DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) said.
In one case implicating Ma, Tsai said that during his first term as Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman in 2005, Ma sold the Broadcasting Corp of China
(中國廣播公司), China Television Co (中國電視公司) and Central Motion Picture Corp (中央電影公司)
— all ill-gotten KMT assets — at a very low price.
Ma was also suspected of illegally rezoning land for the National Development
Institute when he was Taipei mayor, as the party was in the process of selling
KMT-owned property, Tsai said.
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