Taiwan’s ex-president ordered detained

Not related to China
Li Yihu, a Taiwan expert at Peking University in Beijing said Chen's prosecution is not related to China in any way.

"It is a case involving a great amount of money and has had a negative influence, so it must be dealt with," he said. "It is nothing to do with placating the mainland."

Led from the prosecutors' office in handcuffs Tuesday afternoon en route to a waiting vehicle and the drive to Taipei District Court, Chen blamed the Ma administration for his troubles.

"This is a political persecution," he declared. "Cheers for Taiwan."

In sharp contrast to Chen, Ma has made reconciliation with China the centerpiece of his six-month-old administration.

Detention is latest chapter
Chen's detention is the latest chapter in a continuing corruption saga that badly undermined his authority during his last two years in office, and provoked mass demonstrations demanding his resignation.

Family and close advisers were imprisoned on a variety of graft charges, his wife went on trial for allegedly looting a special presidential fund, and Chen himself became the subject of a complex series of judicial probes.

His questioning Tuesday by a special team of prosecutors focused on allegations he laundered money and made illegal use of the special presidential fund during his eight years in office that ended in May.

In a dramatic television appearance in August Chen admitted that he broke the law by not fully disclosing campaign donations he had received, after a lawmaker from Ma's Nationalist Party alleged that Chen's son and daughter-in-law moved millions of dollars to Switzerland in 2007, and then forwarded the funds to the Cayman Islands.

Leftover donations or bribery?
At the time prosecutors said they wanted to determine whether the funds were indeed donations left over from political campaigns — as Chen insisted — or whether bribery might have been involved.

Under Taiwanese law, false declaration of donations is subject to a fine of $9,670, but money laundering carries a seven-year prison sentence.

Several Nationalist lawmakers have also alleged that the ex-president took large bribes in connection with a spate of mergers initiated by the government in 2005, when several small banks took over a number of well-established financial institutions.

Taiwanese newspapers have reported that Chen received millions of dollars in bribes from Taiwan's Far Eastern Group. Both the company and Chen have denied those reports.

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