Saying that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is speeding up efforts to dispose of its party assets, the Cabinet is gearing up efforts to reclaim what they say are national assets acquired by the KMT during its 50-year rule.
Premier Yu Shyi-kun is scheduled to preside over a meeting of the Cabinet-level national asset committee next Wednesday, where a report on the issue will be presented.
"It's an urgent and serious matter because the KMT has divested assets, including bonds and properties, worth more than NT$240 billion since the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was elected into power," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday.
Lin said that enacting a law to regulate party assets is the best remedy for the problem, but a draft bill of a statute regarding disposition of assets improperly obtained by political parties (政黨不當取得財產處理條例) has made little progress in the legislature after 25 failed rounds of cross-party negotiations.
"Without a law, it's very difficult for us to prove that the KMT's assets actually belong to the state," Lin said.
One well-publicized issue involving state assets is the land dispute between the national radio station, Central Broadcasting System (CBS), and the KMT-owned Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC).
"It's just the tip of the iceberg and highlights the problem of the KMT mixing up state and party coffers during its 50-year reign," Lin said.
While the KMT initially said that it didn't possess any documents regarding the land deal, it later reversed itself and said that it did.
"God knows how many more clandestine deals they've been hiding from us," Lin said.
He added that, according to military intelligence, the KMT has transferred some of its business assets to China.
In addition to calling on the KMT to exercise "political ethics and conscience," Lin said that the government will conduct a thorough examination of national assets and help CBS file a lawsuit against BCC.
The CBS-BCC dispute has its roots in a 1952 real estate deal, when the transportation ministry bought two parcels of land in Minhsiung, Chiayi County, for NT$150,000.
An additional NT$2 million was spent to buy broadcasting equipment for CBS, originally a department of BCC, to carry out propaganda broadcasts to China.
The CBS branch station in Minhsiung has been using the land and the equipment ever since, but the land was registered in BCC's name.
CBS expanded in 1972, became the responsibility of the Ministry of National Defense in 1980 and later became a corporate body.
BCC, claiming ownership of the land, started requesting in January 1998 that CBS either return the land or pay rent on it, but CBS has refused these requests.
Last month the Chiayi District Court ruled in favor of BCC in a lawsuit it had filed against CBS in June last year.
A DPP lawmaker yesterday charged that the KMT has otherwise profited from selling off public property.
"The KMT took over 19 theaters nationwide from the Japanese government after World War II and raked in a lot of money by selling the properties," DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (
Citing the example of the New World Cinema (
To provide evidence for her allegations, Yeh yesterday produced a document indicating that the KMT was not the legal owner of the facility and that the New World Cinema was incorporated into the KMT without any legal basis.
The KMT eventually transferred its ownership of the theater to the party-related Central Motion Picture Corp (
"The KMT sold these national properties and gained money from the transactions," Yeh said.
Yeh urged the government to reveal the facts of the KMT's involvement with national assets "regardless of whether it is beyond the retroactive effect of laws."
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