2015’s First Clean Politics Advisory Committee Meeting
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2015’s First Clean Politics Advisory Committee Meeting
Allowing for Transparency and External Public Supervision of Governance
On the afternoon of April 1st, 2015 the Agency Against Corruption (AAC) of the Ministry of Justice held the 1st session of the Clean Politics Advisory Committee of 2015. The meeting was presided over by AAC Director General Lai Che-Hsiung. During the meeting reports were submitted regarding the topics of “The Current Status of the [Ethical Governance Evaluation Project] research efforts commissioned by the AAC”, “[Zhengben Cases – Execution Status of Major Construction Projects] Re-examination Results” and “Cases that AAC Investigated were acquitted by Court”. In addition, results of the preliminary review of cases archived during the current time period and cases submitted for review by the committee were reviewed during the meeting.
The AAC started to carry out the “Ethical Governance Evaluation Project” commissioned research case in January of 2014. The research team from Transparency International Taiwan has held 2 forums on the subject. With the opinions and exchange of ideas from practical experts and academic scholars we hope to establish a national (including central and local government) standard evaluation mechanism for the ethical governance condition of administrative institutions. The research team will also evaluate the comprehensive benefits and possible obstacles of the adoption of the mechanism in the future. They will submit specific recommendations and feasible action plans to let administrative institutions use methods of “self-supervision” to effectively evaluate ethical governance risk, achieving a preventative effect.
During May of 2014 the AAC and the Taipei District Court Prosecutors Office conducted a joint investigation into the construction procurement corruption case of the Affordable Housing Project, garnering interest from the general public regarding quality and corruption levels of major construction procurement cases. Minister Luo of the Ministry of Justice instructed the AAC to research and formulates the “Major Construction Procurement Case Execution Status Investigation Plan”, which included the AAC’s supervision and guidance of 38 government employee ethics units in the investigation of a total of 301 cases. These cases included both major construction procurement projects that were carried out according to the Public Procurement Act and public construction projects which used the public-private cooperation model as outlined in the Act for Promotion of Private Participation in Infrastructure Projects. The investigation results showed that there were 9 cases of suspected illegal behavior which will be investigated by the AAC or referred to the relevant prosecuting institutions for investigation. 81 instances of administrative malfeasance were found, covering a range of 45 different types of malfeasance. The AAC submitted 28 suggestions for reformation of these malfeasance issues to the relevant administrative authorities to serve as reference for future policy planning. The investigation was carried out using preventative and systematic review methods, effectively and actively preventing corruption, receiving both praise and support from many committee members during the meeting.
According to Regulation 2 of the “Outline for the Establishment of the AAC Ethical Governance Review Committee”, during this session the committee added an agenda item for the “Cases that AAC Investigated were acquitted by Court”. This report was submitted by the team members from the AAC’s Northern Investigation Office and included a detailed analysis of the reasons for the not-guilty verdicts. During this section of the meeting, committee members carried out discussion regarding the practical legal issues of the criteria which constitute the crime of fraud in these cases, “knowingly misleading relevant persons” and “illegal property benefits”, as well as the conditions which constitute an attempt offender. This discussion was very beneficial as a reference for the investigation of similar cases in the future.
Lastly, 108 archived cases underwent preliminary review during the case review proceedings of this meeting of the Clean Politics Advisory Committee, 30 of these cases were selected to be submitted for discussion, and 2 of these cases will be included in reports at the next committee meeting session. Committee members unanimously agreed to archive the other cases.
During the committee meeting members gave valuable recommendations regarding ethical governance operations. The AAC will immediately take these recommendations into consideration to evaluate and improve its operations, in order to allow our ethical governance efforts to be more fair, transparent and able to fulfill the general public’s expectations of ethical governance operations.