BEIJING, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Taipei District Court opened on Monday a trial of Lu Hsiu-Lien (Annette Lu), deputy chief of the Taiwan authority, on graft charges related to misuse of special funds, Taiwan's local media reported.

Besides Lu, Lu's secretary and several other people involved in the case were summoned to the court, the local media said.

Lu denied the charges, saying she was unable to embezzle the fund since she did not know the procedures to claim reimbursements or where the receipts used for the reimbursements were from, the local media reported.

Taiwan prosecutors indicted Lu Hsiu-lien, Chen Tang-shan, and Yu Shyi-kun of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and another eight people on graft charges for their misuse of special funds on Sept. 21. The cases were transferred on Oct. 17 to the Taipei District Court.

The prosecutors alleged that between December 2000 and May 2006, Lu's office staff and aides used other people's receipts worth 5.63 million New Taiwan dollars to apply for reimbursements from the special fund for Lu.

The special discretionary funds are available to leading civil servants and politicians during their tenures of office. Half of the payment should be claimed with receipts, while the other half could be claimed with merely a signature of the leaders.

The graft trials of Yu Shyi-kun and Chen Tang-shan are scheduled to begin respectively on Nov. 26 and Dec. 3. (One U.S. dollar equals to 32 New Taiwan dollars)