The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday threatened to stage a protest amid an escalating investigation into its assets, saying that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is manipulating the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee to bring down the KMT, with the DPP saying the “mudslinging” shows that the KMT has little ability to understand and reflect on its wrongdoings.
The majority of the committee’s members are affiliated with the DPP, making the committee a partisan tool against the KMT, KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Hu Wen-chi (胡文琦) told a news conference.
Hu said committee chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) flip-flopped on legal interpretations of the Act Governing the Handling of Ill-
gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例), making the committee a “secret police” that acts outside the law to pursue a political vendetta.
“In the face of the DPP’s ruthless political persecution, the KMT will not rule out the possibility of staging a protest at the DPP’s headquarters,” he said.
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Tang Te-ming (唐德明) criticized the staffing of the committee, saying Koo hired his personal assistants and Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology finance professor Lo Cheng-chung (羅承宗), whose eligibility has been questioned because of his criminal record.
The committee on Monday announced that whistle-blowers who provide information on a political party’s ill-gotten assets would be entitled to 1 percent of the reported assets’ value, with a cap of NT$100 million (US$3.18 million), identical to the maximum incentive offered by Germany for information related to the illegal acquisition of property by political parties in East Germany during the Cold War.
“The KMT does not have a single asset worth more than NT$10 billion. The NT$100 million reward is simply an attempt to link the KMT to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany,” KMT Administration Committee deputy director Lee Fu-hsuan (李福軒) said.
Hu said the DPP was a beneficiary of the KMT’s assets, as late DPP chairman Huang Hsin-chieh (黃信介) sought financial aid from former KMT treasurer Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英) and former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) to move DPP headquarters from Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山) to Zhongzheng District (中正).
“DPP headquarters might as well be qualified as a KMT-affiliated organization,” Hu said.
They called on the DPP and President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to publicize their financial statements amid the investigation of the KMT’s assets.
DPP spokesman David Huang (黃適卓) said the party’s headquarters have been leased from Chong Hong Construction Co (長虹建設) for more than 10 years without outside financial help.
The DPP’s income and expenses are detailed in its annual financial reports, which are public and audited by accounting firms and the Ministry of the Interior, Huang said.
“The KMT has unlawfully occupied public and private properties for 60 years and used that wealth to tip the scales of political competition. It does not know how to give up its ill-gotten assets, but instead slings mud at the DPP. That shows the party has little ability to right a wrong,” he said.
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