OCAC minister quits over resources misuse claims

INDEPENDENT PROBE: Hsu said that she had faced ‘unfounded accusations’ and stepped down to allow for objective investigations to uncover the truth

Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) yesterday tendered her resignation amid allegations that she and her family misused public resources during her overseas trips, saying she wanted to allow official investigations to proceed.

Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) approved the resignation yesterday morning, Cabinet spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said.

Hsu’s resignation came after members of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) accused her of making unnecessary overseas trips as minister.

Overseas Community Affairs Council Minister Hsu Chia-ching announces her resignation at a news conference in Taipei yesterday morning.

Photo: Tu Chien-rong, Taipei Times

The council, a Cabinet-level agency responsible for relations with overseas Taiwanese and ethnic Chinese communities, and Hsu have denied the TPP’s allegations.

Hsu said in a statement that during her six-and-a-half years at the OCAC, first as deputy minister from May 2020 to May 2023 and then as minister, she had repeatedly faced “unfounded accusations from certain lawmakers.”

Despite her best efforts to rebut those accusations, there was “no room for rational discussion,” and so she requested an official investigation into the allegations, she said.

She was also resigning to allow the administrative and judicial authorities to conduct their investigations independently and objectively, although she regretted leaving many projects unfinished, she said.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday said it was investigating the allegations against Hsu and her family, asking Taiwan’s representative offices in Germany, France and the US to provide information about her visits to those countries.

The TPP lawmakers said Hsu has traveled abroad 47 times for a total of 526 days since 2022, spending NT$23.83 million (US$749,489), or about one-third of the council’s international travel budget.

At a news conference on Monday, TPP Legislator Hung Yu-hsiang (洪毓祥) played an audio recording of an unidentified person who said Hsu’s husband and son live in Washington, and that Hsu had traveled to the US capital or New York three or four times in 2024.

The trips exhausted staff at the OCAC’s overseas offices, the person said.

They also said that Hsu’s husband, American political analyst Bo Tedards, had used a Taiwan government vehicle to drive their son to see Hsu.

During an OCAC trip to Germany and France in 2022, Hsu, then deputy minister, had her son added to the delegation as a “staff photographer,” even though he was only teenager at the time, Hung said.

The TPP lawmakers said Hsu’s actions breached conflict-of-interest rules for public servants and violated the Criminal Code. They called for Hsu to be suspended pending an ethics investigation.