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KMT unveils particulars of party assets

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which has been attacked over its stolen wealth, released a report on its assets yesterday, acknowledging its previous failure to explain the issue transparently while promising to put future assets into trust and stop operating for-profit corporations.

Despite acknowledging that the asset-acquiring procedures had lacked legitimacy and caused a negative public impression, KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) declined to offer an apology.

"It happened during a special period, so there's no point in being too critical about it," Ma said.

"This issue can't be explained under normal circumstances, but I promise to maintain a clear separation of party, state and government in the future. This is our pledge, and the first step to the KMT's rebirth," he said.

The KMT report, entitled "Bidding farewell to the past and explaining to the people," claims to reveal the total value of the party's assets and how they have been handled under different chairmen dating back to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).

According to the report, which KMT Deputy Secretary-General Chang Che-chen (張哲琛) and lawyer Lee Yung-jan (李永然) presented to the party's Central Standing Committee yesterday, the current value of the KMT's assets is NT$27.7 billion (US$848 million).

This makes Ma the poorest chairman, compared with former chairman Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), who controlled assets worth NT$38.5 billion and Lien Chan (連戰) with NT$80.8 billion.

While claiming that Lee Teng-hui, who served as KMT chairman from 1988 to 2000, was responsible for losses amounting to NT$42.7 billion because of bad domestic and foreign investments, the report gave the former chairman some credit for making the biggest profit and bringing assets' value to their peak of NT$91.8 billion in 1998.

"Although the bad investments happened under Lee Teng-hui's chairmanship, he was not the decision-maker in all of the deals, and so it would be unfair to blame him for the entire loss," Chang said yesterday at the party headquarters.

Chang said Lee Teng-hui had actually come up with most of the solutions to the bad investments made under his chairmanship.

The KMT deputy secretary-general said that the KMT would inquire into the legal responsibility of those responsible for the bad investments and request compensation for the party's losses.

Dividing the historical background of the assets into three periods, the report acknowledged that the KMT had used its "own discretion" in handling the assets in the first period -- the "one-party state" regime of Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) between 1940 and 1988.

The second period, from 1988 to 2000, which includes Lee's chairmanship, was labeled as a time when the KMT began to seek cooperation with private business. Investments in stock markets and real estate during the period sparked controversies over the party's involvement in corruption scandals, the report said.

After Lien took over the chairmanship in 2000, the KMT lost its position as governing party to the Democratic Progressive Party and began to "face the asset issue honestly," as both Lien and Ma prioritized the clean-up of party assets.

Under Ma's chairmanship, the KMT has sold five party assets, including its Policy Research and Development department, three media outlets and the party's former headquarters, for a total of NT$11.4 billion.

Most of the income, Chang said, was used to pay pensions amounting to NT$1.6 billion and other personnel fees.

In response to accusations from the Executive Yuan and Examination Yuan that the KMT had only returned 25 pieces of land it had received free from local governments, and demands that it should return 19 movie theaters inherited from the Japanese colonial period, Chang said that the KMT had acquired all of the real estate and theaters legally.

"We gave 56 pieces of land back to the local governments, not 25 ... We returned the plots of land not because they had been illegally acquired, but as a positive response to public expectations," Chang said.

Lee Yung-jan said that the KMT had only directly operated five of the 19 theaters, and would return the total value of NT$300 million to the government.

Looking ahead, the KMT's current priority is to sell its Central Investment Corporation, the party's major asset with the highest value at about NT$2.3 billion, to ease its financial burdens, Chang said.

The money will be pumped into its retirement fund, which includes an annual pension budget of NT$2 billion for 900 party workers and a further NT$900 million for 900 retirees.

While approving the party's efforts to make its assets public, members of the Central Standing Committee said that the KMT should not apologize over the issue, but urged the party to put the assets into trust and withdraw from all private investments.

"The assets will remain an issue even after we publish the report ... The question is whether a political party should have assets," KMT Legislator Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) said yesterday, adding that the party should employ its assets for the public good.

KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) urged the party to push for the passage of the political party law so that it may resolve the dilemma in terms of the law.

KMT Legislator John Chiang (蔣孝嚴), son of Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), spoke out on behalf of his father and grandfather.

"The KMT's management of the assets during the party-state period made a contribution to the country ... We don't need to explain anything," he said.

Pledging to sell the Central Investment Corporation before 2008, Ma promised that the KMT would put the remaining assets into trust.
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