Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) yesterday confirmed the failure of an attempt to reach a deal with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over controversial assets owned by the party and two companies affiliated with it.
According to an article in the Chinese-language United Evening News, the committee was close to reaching an administrative contract with the KMT over the assets of two KMT-owned companies — Central Investment Co (中央投資公司) and Hsinyutai Co (欣裕台) — as well as nine checks issued under a KMT account worth NT$468 million (US$14.64 million), but the KMT terminated negotiations with the committee.
Under the terms of the contract, the KMT would be obligated to transfer 55 percent of its holdings in the two companies to the government and donate the remaining 45 percent to fund long-term care and healthcare services.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
The committee last month declared the two companies — which have a combined value of about NT$15.6 billion — KMT-affiliated organizations, and said they should be transferred to the state since they were founded using illegally obtained assets, but the Taipei High Administrative Court on Friday last week suspended the transfer.
Koo yesterday confirmed the existence of the contract, but denied accusations that the committee was engaged in under-the-table dealings.
“The Administrative Procedure Act (行政程序法) authorizes government authorities to negotiate an administrative contract, and the committee is not the first agency attempting to reach such a contract with a civic group,” Koo said.
“KMT Vice Chairman Steve Chan (詹啟賢) took the initiative to contact and negotiate with the committee over the ordered transfer of Central Investment and Hsinyutai to the government, as well as the nine checks” frozen by the committee, he said.
Koo reiterated that it was not the committee that took the initiative, adding that the negotiations were conducted according to the law and with the participation of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Finance, but the committee failed to reach an agreement with the KMT.
Koo said he did not understand why the KMT backed out of the contract, but speculated that Chan might not be fully authorized to negotiate such an agreement.
Meanwhile, KMT members yesterday protested outside the committee’s headquarters over a freeze on KMT bank accounts, which they said prevented the party from paying salaries and pensions, and they demanded that the committee allow the KMT to make the payments.
Showing a document the committee issued to the KMT, Koo told the protesters that the committee had allowed the party to access about NT$922 million from the nine checks and a KMT account, as well as a payment owed to the KMT by the Chang Yung-fa Foundation (張榮發基金) to pay for party employees’ salaries, pensions and health insurance.
“I do not know why the KMT did not tell you” about the committee’s decision, he said.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS