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2012 ELECTIONS: DPP
files charges over spying claims
DOUBLE STANDARDS? A lawyer said the SID should
be able to probe claims of spying on Tsai Ing-wen just as quickly as it had
probed accusations against her
By Chris Wang / Staff Reporter
Democratic Progressive Party
legislative candidates hold a press conference in Taipei yesterday to call on
President Ma Ying-jeou to explain donations they said he had received from a
contract-winning company. From left to right are Pasuya Yao, Juan Chao-hsiung
and Lee Chien-chang.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
yesterday filed charges against two high-ranking intelligence officials,
accusing them of spying on the DPP’s presidential candidate, Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
DPP Legislator Chen Chieh-ju (陳節如) and lawyers Hsu Kuo-yong (徐國勇), Huang Di-ying
(黃帝穎) and Lin Hong-wen (林鴻文) brought charges against National Security Council
Secretary-General Hu Wei-chen (胡為真) and Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau
(MJIB) Director Chang Ji-ping (張濟平) at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special
Investigation Division (SID) yesterday morning.
Hu and Chang have broken six laws, among them the Presidential and Vice
Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法), the National Intelligence
Services Act (國家情報工作法) and the Public Servants’ Administrative Neutrality Act
(公務人員行政中立法), and are also guilty of corruption, Hsu said.
The two are at the center of a controversy described by the DPP as “Taiwan’s
Watergate,” after the Chinese-language Next Magazine reported on Dec. 28 that Hu
had asked the MJIB to deploy 28 agents nationwide to monitor Tsai.
According to the report, Hu had submitted information detailing the DPP
chairperson’s schedule, meetings, contacts and the possible number of votes at
stake to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
“Hu and Chang have utilized the state apparatus to persecute the opposition
candidate and to benefit Ma’s re-election campaign,” Hsu said.
Hsu, who on Monday cited an anonymous source inside the MJIB as saying Chang had
given orders to destroy all documents related to the monitoring project, urged
the SID to immediately launch an investigation and secure any evidence.
While the SID has said it would stay out of politics, if it could launch an
investigation the day after Council of Economic Planning and Development
Minister Christina Liu (劉憶如) accused Tsai of improper involvement in the
formation of a biotech company, then it should also be able to immediately open
an investigation into allegations of the government spying on Tsai, Hsu said.
Elsewhere yesterday, three DPP legislative candidates accused Ma of violating
the Government Procurement Act (政府採購法) and the Political Donations Act (政治獻金法)
before he became president.
Pasuya Yao (姚文智), Juan Chao-hsiung (阮昭雄) and Lee Chien-chang (李建昌) said during a
joint press conference that during his presidential campaign in 2008, Ma had
accepted six political donations from Pan Chun-jung (潘俊榮), chairman of Kung Sing
Engineering Corp (KESCO, 工信工程).
Pan’s company had won the bid to build Taipei’s Neihu MRT line in 2003 when Ma
was serving as the city’s mayor, but the line was still under construction when
the donations were made in 2008, which was a violation of the Political
Donations Act, Yao said.
According to the Government Procurement Act, Ma’s decision to grant the project
to KESCO in 2003 was also illegal because the Central Investment Holding Co
(中央投資公司), owned by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), held 11.23 percent of
KESCO’s shares, the candidates said.
The trio added that they would file charges against Ma at the Taipei District
Prosecutors’ Office today.
In response, Ma’s re-election campaign office yesterday said the president had
handled political donations during the 2008 presidential campaign in accordance
with regulations and urged the DPP not to avoid the discussion of Tsai’s alleged
wrongdoing in the case of Yu Chang Biologics (宇昌生技股份有限公司), now known as TaiMed
Biologics (中裕新藥股份有限公司), by dredging up an old case in the hope of blackening
Ma’s name.
Additional reporting by Mo Yan-chih
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