Life Sentence for Corruption?
By Hakim Joe
Life imprisonment on corruption and money laundering charges. Not a murder rap, not treason against the country but merely siphoning US$15 million (RM54 million) from the state coffers and accepting another US$15 million from bribes. CSB became Taiwan’s first ever former President to face jail time.
Former Taiwanese president, Chen Shui Bian (CSB) was sentenced to life imprisonment last Friday (11 September 2009) on corruption charges. The prosecution had brought accusations of embezzlement, money laundering, forgery and graft against CSB and the case had been proven without a doubt as to the former President’s guilt.
No, you did not read wrongly. Life imprisonment on corruption and money laundering charges. Not a murder rap, not treason against the country but merely siphoning US$15 million (RM54 million) from the state coffers and accepting another US$15 million from bribes. CSB became Taiwan’s first ever former President to face jail time.
CSB first gained notoriety during the 2004 presidential elections when he was reportedly shot in the stomach while campaigning on the eve of Election Day. Weeks prior to this incident, CSB and his party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was trailing the Pan-Blue (coalition party consisting of Kuomintang, People First Party & New Party) candidate, Lien Chan, by a very large margin on the approval ratings. The following day after the shooting, CSB won the presidential elections by an extremely narrow margin of fewer than 30,000 votes out of the12.9 million votes polled (or 0.23%). That he had gained the majority of the fence-sitters’ ballots on a sympathetic vote was evident. What tarnished his win was that leaked video recordings from the hospital showed CSB walking into the hospital after being shot and the fact that two main suspects, Chen Yi Hsiung (a retired construction worker) and Huang Hung Ren, purportedly committed suicide 9 days after the shootings. The Taiwanese Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) closed the case 5 months later after investigators concluded that Chen Yi Hsiung acted alone.
Support for CSB waned after a professor, James Chun I Lee, at National Taiwan University's Graduate Institute of Forensic Medicine, led an investigation on the alleged suicide of Chen Yi Hsiung and found that the “suspect” did not drown from an apparent suicide attempt as officially reported, but was dumped into the water after he had died. Subsequent CIB investigation found that the handgun found on the suspect was a 9mm handgun. However, the two bullets used in the wounding of the politicians were of a 9.1mm or a .38 calibre and one cannot shoot a .38 calibre bullet from a 9mm pistol (the inside diameter of a 9mm weapon is approximately 9.03mm). Up to this day, the Kuomintang still claims that CSB and his VP, Annette Lu (shot in the knee while wearing a knee cast from an injury she purportedly had earlier), engineered the shooting to attract the sympathetic votes.
Further investigations (initiated by the KMT) of the shooting revealed that CSB was taken to the Chi-Mei Hospital instead of the larger and closer Tainan Hospital. Other unanswered questions include (1) why the wound (gash) was 11cm in length when the entry and exit holes (and the blood stains) on CSB’s shirt only measured 7.5cm; (2) why the blood soaked through CSB’s shirt but failed to stain the interior side of the jacket; (3) why the CIB claimed that there is only one hole in the jacket when earlier forensics photographs showed two holes; (4) why the lead bullet head did not indicate the presence of any fibres (from the jacket); (5) why the lead bullet indicated curly lines as opposed to straight lines if it penetrated the jacket and the shirt; (6) why the lead bullet was found in between the undershirt and dress shirt (if any entry and exit holes were evident); etcetera. No responses from DPP were forthcoming.
If CSB thought that his troubles were over, he was badly mistaken. Two years after being shot and re-elected, his son-in-law was arrested on charges of insider trading and embezzlement and was sentenced to seven years imprisonment. His son-in-law’s father was also arrested, found guilty and sentenced to nine years imprisonment. Additionally, his wife (the First Lady), Wu Shu Jen, was involved in the Pacific-Sogo scandal where she illegally obtained the department store’s gift certificates (the case is still pending in court) and he himself was accused of faking claim expenses (RM1.1 million) by submitting false invoices. CSB’s approval rating fell to a measly 5.8% from a high of 79% in 2000.
In 2004 during the re-election campaign, Chen Yu Hao, a Taiwanese businessman and one of the nation’s 10 most wanted fugitives, declared he had visited CSB’s home in 1994 and 2000 to donate a total of NT$6 million (RM644,000) towards CSB’s re-election campaign. This started an investigation which found CSB’s presidential deputy secretary general guilty of corruption. Chen Che Nan was sentenced to 12 years in jail. Earlier, Jeffrey Koo, the Chairman of Chinatrust Financial Holding Co Ltd, admitted giving NT$340 million (RM36.5 million) to CSB’s wife in exchange for her support in influencing her husband to approve several business transactions, including the acquisition of government-controlled China Development Financial Holding Corporation and the purchase of a stake in government-linked Mega Holdings.
Not bad enough? CSB was then successfully sued by People First Party’s Chairman, James Soong, for NT$3 million (RM322,000) after the President repeatedly accused him of secretly meeting the director of the People's Republic of China's Taiwan Affairs Office. (DPP is pro-independence and KMT favours a conciliatory relationship with PRC.) Additionally, six months after being investigated for the Pacific-Sogo scandal, the First Lady was indicted on yet another corruption charge of faking official documents to defraud the Taiwanese Government of NT$14.8 million (RM1.6 million). CSB was also a suspect but escaped indictment as the Taiwanese Constitution does not allow sitting Presidents to be charged with a crime. The Supreme Prosecutor however indicated that his office will file for an indictment the minute CSB leaves office. To add salt to the wound, a recall (or an impeachment) motion was initiated on 27 June 2007 but was unsuccessful as the two-thirds majority (148 votes) were not obtained (by a mere 29 votes) in the Legislature. However, no legislator voted against the recall motion as all the DPP representatives were absent and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) representatives cast abstaining votes. A second recall motion on 13 October and a third recall motion on 24 November also failed to dislodge the President. On all three occasions, all DPP legislators remained absent from the Legislature.
By now, the Legislature was up in arms fighting corruption and the Supreme Prosecutor’s office was having the time of their life. Taiwan’s Legislature had just passed a Bill regulating political donations and corruption. Within a few months, 1,487 people were indicted on various corruption charges. 1,252 were subsequently convicted (84.2% success rate).
In December 2006, court proceedings against the First Lady started but were deferred after she collapsed in court. Subsequent attempts to continue were hampered when she refused to appear in court after being summoned on 18 occasions, citing ill health. The case is still pending.
In 2008, CSB stepped down as the DPP’s chairman (he was however still the Taiwanese President). Frank Hsieh was the new chairman and when the Taiwanese Election was held later in the year, Ma Ying Jeou (Kuomingtang) beat him to become the new President of Taiwan (Republic of China). Ma had earlier resigned from his post as the mayor of Taipei to contest the presidency. One hour after CSB left the Presidential Office Building, he was served a writ limiting his movement as the Supreme Prosecutor's Office started an official investigation into the former President’s “illegal dealings”. New President Ma quickly moved to declassify certain documents in pertinent to the former president's use of special expenses, which CSB had classified earlier.
Three months later, on 13 August 2008, the Supreme Prosecutor's Office announced on national media that the Swiss Government had petitioned the Taiwanese Government to provide investigative assistance in a money laundering case that the Swiss authorities were probing. This was with regards to almost US$31 million in a Taiwanese citizen by the name of Huang Jui Ching’s four Swiss accounts which were subsequently re-routed to other banking accounts in the Cayman Islands. On the same evening, CSB called a news conference in which he admitted that, “My conscience has told me that I cannot continue to lie to myself or to others, so I will choose to be bluntly honest: I have, in the past, committed deeds that are against the rule of law, and I am willing, for all campaign finance dishonesty from my four elections for mayor and for president, to apologize to the people.” Huang Jui Ching is CSB’s daughter-in-law.
On the very next day (14 August 2008), CSB denied the story when it was reported in a magazine. CSB and his wife resigned from DPP on 15 August. Two days later, his house, office and his brother-in-law’s residence were raided. In one of these raids, a computer disc was found with contents detailing tens of thousands of money transfers involving more than 120 private accounts and phoney companies. CSB was now barred from leaving Taiwan.
On 31 October 2008, the first arrest started. Chiou I Jen (former Taiwanese Vice President, former Secretary General of the National Security Council and ex-CSB campaign manager) was charged with embezzling US$500,000 from diplomatic funds. CSB was detained on 11 November 2008 (after failing to show up for questioning on five summoned occasions) and formally arrested the following day. He joined nine others also implicated in the corruption case notably Chiou I Jen, Ma Yung Cheng (former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general), Yeh Sheng Mao (former Bureau of Investigation director-general), Wu Ching Mao (CSB’s brother-in-law), Chen Ming Wen (Chiayi County Commissioner), and Chen Jing Yao (Nice Group President’s brother).
Fast forward to this day and you have a former president involved in corrupted practises and an unsolved murder/suicide case, found guilty for corruption and sentenced to life imprisonment. This was however only possible in Taiwan where the President and the Legislature are elected on separate platforms. As in the case between 2004 and 2008, the President (CSB) was from DPP but the Legislature was controlled by the Opposition. (Pan-Blue has 119 elected representatives out of the 221 seats, or almost 54%.) Another thing is that the Taiwanese judiciary are protected from undue political influence where the state prosecutors are tenured and their work reviewed by an independent personnel committee beyond political reach.
Taiwan started its political reforms and anti-corruption drive way back in 2005. What of Malaysia?
