Politics

President Ma announces new anti-corruption agency

ROC President Ma Ying-jeou pledged to establish a new agency exclusively responsible for fighting government corruption July 20. (CNA)

• Publication Date：07/21/2010
• Source： Taiwan Today
• By  Michelle Lu

ROC President Ma Ying-jeou said July 20 that a new agency exclusively responsible for fighting government corruption will be established under the Ministry of Justice.

Ma’s announcement came in the wake of recent scandals, including Taichung City police officers’ involvement with gangsters, and the arrests of three Taiwan High Court judges and a prosecutor on bribery charges, which led to the resignation of Judicial Yuan President Lai In-jaw July 18.

“I am very determined to build a clean government, in which anti-corruption is the motto of all civil servants. And I will never allow a small number of corrupt officials to damage the image of the government,” Ma said at a news conference at the Presidential Office.

Ma said the new anti-corruption agency will not be modeled after Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption or Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, both of which are independent anti-corruption bodies reporting directly to the government’s top administrator or head of state.

“Taiwan’s anti-corruption administration will be under the MOJ due to our practice of the civil law system, under which prosecutors are the major representatives of the country’s investigation and prosecution,” the president explained.

Regarding criticisms that the new agency could overlap with existing government agencies already in place to fight corruption, Ma said it is a global trend, as indicated in the United Nations Convention against Corruption, to establish one or several exclusive watchdog agencies responsible for the prevention, investigation and criminalization of corruption.

In Taiwan’s case, “all the responsible agencies can work together and provide a cross-fire against corruption,” Ma said. “ Officers in the new agency will not be ‘toothless tigers’ but will have the power to investigate crimes involving corruption.”

Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu said the new anti-corruption agency will have a staff of 200 in its initial stages, drawn from officials of the ethics departments of government agencies, the Investigation Bureau and the police.

A bill specifying the organization of the new agency will be sent to the Legislature for approval in August, according to Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Shou-huang. “We hope that the agency will be on the road in 2012,” he added. (THN)