Ex-MJIB chief indicted

Lin Jin-tsun, spokesman for the Taipei District Prosecutors Office, said Yeh, who just retired from his post as IB chief on July 16, withheld information about overseas bank accounts held in the names of Chen Shui-bian’s family members.

The jail term sought by prosecutors is harsher than usual because the defendant is a government official, he said. Lin said the bureau’s Anti-Money Laundering Center obtained the information from the global anti-money laundering association Egmont Group on Jan. 27.

The bureau was supposed to forward the information to the Supreme Prosecutors Office.

Yeh instead told his staff that he would personally handle the case, considering the extremely sensitive nature of the affair.

However, the Supreme Prosecutors Office never received the information, Lin added.

Chou You-yi, director of the Investigation Bureau’s Anti-Money Laundering Center, asked Yeh about the status of the case in March. Yeh told Chou that he would hand it over to Prosecutor General Chen Tsung-min in person, prosecutor Lin related.

Lin quoted the prosecutor general as saying that he never received such information.

Yeh later claimed that he had forgotten to pass on the information to Chen Tsung-min because the country was embroiled in a fiercely contested presidential election at the time.

After Yeh came under investigation concerning the case, Yeh said he had been busy with preparing for his retirement after the new administration of the ruling Kuomintang took office on May 20.

Lin said a search of Yeh’s homes in Muzha in Taipei and other storage places in Taoyuan on Aug. 21 yielded a photocopy of the information from Egmont but not the original document.

“The fact that Yeh carefully kept a photocopy of the information belies his claim that he totally forgot about the whole matter,” Lin said.

Yeh declined to tell investigators where the original copy is.

The news broke in late July, after two Swiss prosecutors asked Taiwan authorities for help in investigating a possible case of money laundering, involving a reported sum of US$21 million deposited in Swiss bank accounts under the name of Chen Shui-bian’s daughter-in-law.

Lin indicated that it was not the first time Yeh had withheld crucial information about the former first family during his tenure of almost seven years as the nation’s top criminal investigator.

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