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TAIPEI: Prosecutors in Taiwan on Wednesday appealed
the acquittal of the opposition Kuomintang’s presidential
candidate, Ma Ying-jeou, on corruption charges to the island’s
Supreme Court.
Last month, the High Court
cleared Ma, the former mayor of Taipei and a former justice
minister—of corruption and breach of trust, on the grounds that he
had not tried to obtain illegal benefits via his expense accounts.
But prosecutors say they hope the
Supreme Court will make a definitive ruling on the decades-old
system of allotting special funds to higher-ranking government
officials, a system, which analysts say, is full of loopholes.
Ma, who is running to replace
President Chen Shui-bian in March presidential polls, stood accused
of misusing more than 11 million Taiwan dollars (US$338,460) in
expense accounts during his tenure as mayor in 1998 to 2006.
Judges at both the Taipei
District Court and the High Court agreed with Ma, ruling that the
expenses are the government’s “subsidies” to ranking
officials, and that Ma did not intend to misuse the funds.
--AFP
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