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Lien, Soong under fire over land transfer
KMT ASSETS:
A DPP legislator claims that the pan-blue candidates were involved in the transfer of land from the government to a KMT-owned broadcasting company
By Fiona Lu
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Jan 16, 2004, Page 3
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Lawmakers from the Democratic Progressive Party gather outside the Control Yuan yesterday, accusing Chinese Nationalist Party Chairman and presidential candidate Lien Chan of deliberately neglecting to report assets he should have disclosed under the Public Functionary Assets Disclosure Law.
PHOTO: CHIEN JUNG-FENG, TAIPEI TIMES
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Hualien prosecutors should summon Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and his presidential running mate People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) to investigate whether they misappropriated state-owned land by giving it to the Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC), which is owned by the KMT, a ruling party lawmaker said yesterday.
"Prosecutors of the Hualien District Prosecutors' Office should summon Chinese Nationalist Party Chairman Lien Chan and his presidential running mate James Soong to account for their involvement in land misappropriation in Hualien by the BCC, a KMT-owned broadcasting company," said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津).
Yeh accused the pair of using their positions in the former KMT government to transfer a 3,000-ping (9,917m2) plot of state-owned land in Hualien City to the BCC, which used the land for several decades for a branch office of the radio station. The land, which BCC acquired at no cost, would have been worth NT$100 million at market prices, Yeh said.
"Hualien prosecutors should summon Lien and Soong to scrutinize the disputed land transfer, as they did President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) on Wednesday. The prosecutors said they summoned the president the same as they would ordinary people," she said.
Yeh accused Lien and Soong of colluding in the land transfer, conducted in 1984, when Lien headed the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and authorized the transfer to the BCC.
Soong was the chairman of the KMT-run Hua-Hsia Investment Holding Co, which managed the BCC.
Yeh said the BCC was under suspicion of falsifying official documents, as it registered the land transfer as a business transaction rather than a free transfer.
As a top-ranking official of the investment holding company, Soong cannot shy away from his responsibility in explaining the disputed transfer to prosecutors, whose duty is to enforce social justice, Yeh said.
Yeh also claimed that Lien used an irrelevant telecommunications subsidy to write off the monetary loss to the government of the transfer.
She said the two men were sus-pected of violating laws concerning land administration and graft.
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