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Former KMT chairman appears in court as corruption trial reconvenes |
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20:46, July 03, 2007 |
Former Kuomintang (KMT) party chairman Ma Ying-jeou appeared on Tuesday in a Taiwan court for the sixth session of his trial on corruption charges, local media reported.
Before appearing in the local court in Taipei, Ma was reported as saying that the court would understand that he had not swindled expense funds once the whole procedure for claiming the funds had been clarified.
Three secretaries who worked for Ma when he was Taipei mayor took the stand at the court on Tuesday.
Ma was charged with misusing more than 11 million Taiwan dollars (330,000 U.S. dollars) in expense funds during his tenure as mayor of Taipei.
During the previous hearings, Ma pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Ma resigned as chairman of the KMT, Taiwan's leading opposition party,after being indicted on Feb. 13, but declared that he would run for the 2008 Taiwan leadership election.
The Kuomintang Party (KMT) endorsed Ma Ying-jeou as its candidate for Taiwan leader in the 2008 election on June 24. Ma has made Vincent Siew, a veteran economist, his running mate.
The expense funds, also known as special allowance funds, are
allocated by the Taiwan authorities to executive officers and official receipts are only required for half of the funds, while the spending of the other half requires only the signature of the official.
Regulations concerning the expenditure of the special allowances have never been clear. Lu Hsiu-lien, Su Tseng-chang,
Hsieh Chang-ting and Yu Shyi-kun, major leaders of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), have all been found involved in similar cases.
Source: Xinhua
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