Ching made the remarks at a press conference held last night immediately after returning from Switzerland, where she gave relevant documents and materials needed by the Swiss prosecution units to help investigate the alleged money laundering by the former first family.

Ching said she also expressed hopes that prosecution units of both could cooperate to build bilateral channels for legal assistance to each other, and got positive responses.

The Swiss prosecution authorities recently sought Taiwan’s help in a probe into a possible money laundering case in Switzerland involving the ex-president’s son Chen Chih-chung and his wife Huang Jui-ching.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Prosecutors Office (SPO) decided yesterday to track the sources of the large sum of cash deposited by the former first family.

Members of the SPO Special Investigation Division searched Chen’s residence and office the day before and questioned Chen and his wife, Wu Shu-jen, on money laundering allegations and their roles in a public fund embezzlement case.

The prosecutors were told by Wu during the questioning that US$21 million deposited in the family’s overseas bank accounts was all legal income, including the balance of campaign funds from Chen’s two mayoral races and his two presidential campaigns, his income as a lawyer prior to the 1980s, and her own dowry.

Wu said that for the convenience of investing overseas, she asked her elder brother, Wu Ching-mao, and her daughter-in-law, Huang Jui-ching, to open bank accounts in Singapore and Switzerland to facilitate the liquidity of their money.

The prosecutors believed that the sums deposited in the Singaporean and Swiss bank accounts are much larger than the “state affairs fund” that Chen possibly embezzled as president between 2000-2008.

They suspect that the deposits could be bribes that the first couple received from the “second financial reform” drive that was launched during Chen’s tenure, in which a number of private banking institutions became major financial operations after merging with publicly run ones.

The deposits could also be bribes that the first couple received from a spate of personnel arrangements and shifts during Chen’s tenure, particularly the change of chairmen of major state-run or state-controlled enterprises, according to one of the prosecutors.

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