The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday intensified its attacks on Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan's (
DPP Legislators Tuan Yi-kang (
At a press conference at the DPP's headquarters yesterday, Tuan said Lien has sold one of the controversial properties in question to a company owned by his family.
According to Tuan this is a violation of laws requiring full disclosure of officials' financial holdings.
Tuan said that Lien transferred part of his fortune to six different companies which had been set up in the names of his relatives from 1987 to 2000 as a means to dodge the legal responsibility of reporting their personal wealth.
"Although these six companies were set up under the names of other people, the major shareholding was still controlled by either Lien's wife or his children. The directors of these companies usually hold less than 1 percent of the company's shares, while the majority of the shares were in the hands of Lien's family," Tuan said.
The roles of Lien's relatives in these companies are "really suspicious," Tuan said.
Lin said that the building currently occupied by the Idee Department Store on Nanjing West Road in downtown Taipei was an example of Lien's relinquishment of his wealth.
Lin said that Lien had sold the land to one of his own companies in 1997 to avert public chastisement. At that time the former tenants used the property to run sex bars and video-game gambling parlors.
The land belonged to a Japanese citizen while Taiwan was under Japanese rule in the 1940s, but was nationalized by the KMT government in 1950.
In 1951 the property was registered in the name of Lien's father, Lien Chen-tung (連震東), who was a government official in charge of reclaiming the land from the Japanese occupation at the time, Lin said.
Lien Chan inherited the property in 1986.
"Lien has just transferred the property from his left hand into his right hand to reduce public suspicion. But in the final analysis Lien still owns these assets," Lin said.
Lin encouraged the authorities to investigate Lien Chan's family wealth to determine whether he had in fact been involved in illegal acquisition of the nation's property and releasing false reports of his personal wealth.
In response to the KMT's threat to press charges against DPP officials for distorting the facts about the size of Lien's real estate holdings, Tuan yesterday said: "We welcome the KMT taking legal action, because in this way the authorities would be compelled to investigate Lien's wealth and more evidence will be released."
Tuan and Lin yesterday said they are willing to give up their immunity from prosecution as legislators and take responsibility for their accusations about Lien's wealth.
"We have been working very hard to collect the evidence we need to prove that Lien had acquired part of his fortune illegally. We would be more than happy if the prosecutors could help us to investigate the case and expose more evidence," Tuan said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater