Ex-President of Taiwan Is Charged With Graft

BEIJING — Lee Teng-hui, a former president of Taiwan who moved the self-governing island toward democracy, was indicted Thursday on charges of embezzling $7.79 million from a state fund, becoming the second former president of Taiwan to be charged with corruption.

Lee Teng-hui

Prosecutors said in a 23-page indictment that Mr. Lee, 88, took money from the government’s National Security Bureau fund while he was in office and laundered it in order to build the Taiwan Research Institute, which became his office after he stepped down in 2000 as president. Liu Tai-ying, one of Mr. Lee’s aides and the founder of the institute, was also charged.

Ku Li-hsiung, a lawyer representing Mr. Lee, said the prosecution did not have sufficient evidence against Mr. Lee, according to the Central News Agency, the state news agency of Taiwan. Mr. Lee is known to be disliked by the current president, Ma Ying-jeou, and his party, the Kuomintang, which generally advocates closer ties with China. Mr. Lee took office as a member of the Kuomintang but was expelled from the party shortly after leaving office for founding a pro-independence group, the Taiwan Solidarity Union.

Mr. Lee was the first president to be democratically elected in modern Taiwan, where the Kuomintang retreated in 1949, following its defeat in the Chinese civil war. Though Taiwan operates in de facto independence, China insists that the island is a breakaway province that must be brought back into the fold. Mr. Lee began serving as president in 1988, when the Kuomintang was the ruling party, and then was democratically elected in 1996. He was known to secretly favor independence from China while remaining a member of the Kuomintang, some of whose leaders favor reunification.

When Mr. Lee stepped down in 2000, after one democratically elected term, the office was taken over by Chen Shui-bian, a member of the Democratic Progressive Party, which has moved closer toward advocating formal independence. Mr. Chen was found guilty on corruption charges in 2009 after leaving office and is now in prison.

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