TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Presidential Office on Saturday (July 27) announced it was disciplining seven senior guards, including the two top officers, over the cigarette smuggling scandal which has rocked the National Security Bureau (NSB) and China Airlines (CAL).
The scandal broke last Monday (July 22), within hours of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) return from a successful visit to four Caribbean allies and two stopovers in the United States. Two officers at the National Security Bureau (NSB) were alleged to have brought 9,800 cartons of cigarettes duty-free into the country using the president’s arrival as cover and with help from inside Taiwan’s major carrier, CAL.
Following days of allegations and demands for explanations from the major players in the scandal, the Presidential Office said Saturday that the top officer in the presidential guard, who had already been transferred, was facing further disciplinary action, as well as his deputy and five other officers.
President Tsai said that if there were wrongs, they should be righted, and if there were leaks, they should be plugged, insisting it should be impossible for such a situation to occur again, a spokesman said.
Earlier reports said the two NSB officers had bought a total of 10,009 cartons of cigarettes during Tsai’s recent trip, but the practice went as far back as 2014, during the rule of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
The scandal also provoked a change of leadership at the NSB as well as tense relations between CAL and the Ministry of Transportation, which expressed displeasure with the slow progress of the airline’s investigation into its role in the affair
