Protesters led by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei city councilors yesterday thwarted an effort by the Ministry of Justice’s Administrative Enforcement Agency to seize a building owned by the party in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山).
The ministry ordered the property sealed after the KMT failed to pay a NT$864.8 million (US$28.5 million) fine for selling 450 properties that the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee deemed to be illegal assets.
An official from the agency’s Taipei Branch, Huang Yu-wen (黃有文), was confronted by KMT Taipei city councilors Chung Hsiao-ping (鍾小平), Chin Huei-chu (秦慧珠), Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇) and Angela Ying (應曉薇), who had mobilized dozens of KMT employees and were waiting outside the building.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Brandishing placards and shouting slogans, the protesters told Huang to “get lost.”
They said the Democratic Progressive Party wanted to seize the property in an attempt to “wipe out” the KMT, and that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration was an “authoritarian bully.”
Phalanxes of police officers were deployed at the scene to maintain order.
While negotiating with Huang, Wang cited three payment options the KMT had proposed to pay the fine, all of which have been rejected by the agency.
The KMT has filed a lawsuit in an administrative court to stop the fine from being levied, Wang said, adding that the party must not allow its offices to be confiscated before all legal procedures have been exhausted.
Huang said that he was acting in accordance with a ruling passed by the assets committee in June.
The standoff prevented Huang from accessing the building, forcing him to leave after 10 minutes.
Huang and other agency officials then proceeded to three other KMT properties designated for foreclosure: two dormitories on Nanjing E Road Sec 5 and one on Jiaxing Street.
They were able to seal the Jiaxing dormitory and one of the Nanjing dormitories.
Huang said that he would exhaust all measures to negotiate with the KMT’s lawyers over the Songshan property.
Should negotiations fail, it would not change the fate of the building, which the court has marked for foreclosure, he said.
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