Three tellers who handled the expense funds when Ma was Taipei mayor took the stand at the court on Tuesday at the request of Ma's counsel.

They said Ma claimed and spent the funds in a "routine" manner.

On leaving the local court in Taipei, Ma was reported as saying that he had requested the tellers appear in court to prove he had not swindled expense funds and his way of using the expense funds did not differ from that of previous mayors.

Ma was charged with misusing more than 11 million Taiwan dollars (US$330,000) in expense funds during his tenure as mayor of Taipei.

At the previous hearings, Ma pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Ma resigned as chairman of the KMT, Taiwan's leading opposition party, after being indicted on Feb. 13, but declared that he would run for the 2008 Taiwan leadership election.

The Kuomintang Party (KMT) endorsed Ma Ying-jeou as its candidate for Taiwan leader in the 2008 election on June 24. Ma has made Vincent Siew, a veteran economist, his running mate.

The expense funds, also known as special allowance funds, are allocated by the Taiwan authorities to executive officers. Official receipts are required for half of the funds. The spending of the other half only requires the signature of the official.

Regulations concerning the expenditure of the special allowances have never been clear. Lu Hsiu-lien, Su Tseng-chang, Hsieh Chang-ting and Yu Shyi-kun, major leaders of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), have all been named in similar cases.