The Ministry of the Interior is to remove Cecilia Koo (辜嚴倬雲) from her position as National Women’s League chairwoman if the organization continues to refuse requests to provide documentation on how the “military benefit tax” was used, Minister of the Interior Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮) said yesterday.
“If they remain unmoved and keep clinging to the position that they cannot provide the information because of the time that has passed, then we should remove their leader, and we would follow the correct procedure to do that,” Yeh said in response to questions from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lai Jui-lung (賴瑞隆) at a meeting of the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee over how the ministry would respond if the group rejected its latest demand for information.
The ministry has repeatedly issued warnings over missing documentation to the group, which has not made any of its required filings for years.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
While the league in February provided a list of assets adding up to more than NT$30 billion (US$991 million at the current exchange rate), other documents with details of the whereabouts of the proceeds from the “military benefit tax” remain unaccounted for, Yeh said.
“This group has definitely not been acting like a normally operating association in response to our attempts to exercise our right of supervision — they have been extremely sluggish, passive and guarded,” he said.
The “military benefit tax” refers to a tariff on the US dollar value of all imported goods from 1955 to 1989, which provided most of the funding for the organization’s charity work, including construction of military dependents’ villages.
Yeh said the ministry has already pieced together some external documentation on how the “military benefit tax” was used.
“Even though the documents do not give a complete picture, we can still see some mechanisms, processes and content, so for them to say it is impossible to provide documentation because of all the time that has passed is completely unacceptable,” he said.
Founded by Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) wife, Soong Mayling (宋美齡), the league is under investigation by the Cabinet’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee over allegations it was a satellite organization of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Department of Civil Affairs Deputy Director Lin Ching-chi (林清淇) said the league has until May 20 — the one-year anniversary of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) inauguration — to respond to the ministry’s latest request.
“We’ve already warned them too many times — there will be further action if we are ignored this time,” he said, adding that the league has launched an administrative lawsuit against a request filed last month.
Separately yesterday, the DPP caucus questioned the financial status of the league.
According to an income and expenditure statement for the 2015 fiscal year submitted earlier this year, the league, which mainly relies on savings interest as its income, received NT$850 million in interest in 2008, but that interest dropped to about NT$300 million between 2010 and 2015, DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-chin (葉宜津) said.
The league receives a few million New Taiwan dollars as “miscellaneous income” every year, but it collected NT$55.07 million in that category in 2011.
The league spent NT$52.45 million in donations in 2009, but that rose to NT$380 million in 2010.
“To whom were the donations made? Were they for elections?” Yeh asked.
Personnel expenses increased from about NT$20 million in 2014 to more than NT$50 million in 2015, she said.
“Were the expenses made to accommodate KMT employees?” Yeh asked.
DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) called on the ministry to dissolve the league, and for the league’s assets that are thought to be ill-gotten to be returned to the state.
Additional reporting by Chen Wei-han
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