The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is dillydallying in returning its party assets deemed improperly acquired, and the Cabinet vowed to enact a law to make the party's property transactions illegal should officials fail in negotiations to convince the KMT to return the dis-puted assets.
"Before the bill regarding the disposition of assets improperly obtained by political parties (政黨不當取得財產處理條例) is passed into law, I'm afraid we can only make moral appeals and negotiate with them," Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (林全) told reporters yesterday morning after meeting with KMT officials.
The last meeting between them on the subject was on March 15.
According to Hung Bao-chuan (洪寶川), director of the National Property Bureau, the KMT has returned only 1 percent of the properties the ministry believes belong in the state coffers.
"While we'd like to see the KMT return assets worth about NT$20.1 billion, it has only returned about NT$220 million so far," Hung said.
The properties handed back were five houses and 24 pieces of land.
Little progress was made on the issue yesterday because the KMT insisted that the talks should be based on a consensus reached during the March 15 meeting. At that meeting it agreed to return five houses and 24 lots, five movie theaters, two buildings (the Shih Chien Building and the Shih Chien Hall), five lots in Taipei City and several pieces of real estate taken over from the Japanese colonial government after World War II.
However, the KMT has sold one of the movie theaters and failed to reach agreement yesterday over how to return the five to the state. A price tag of NT$900 million was placed on the five theaters.
The KMT has not yet finalized its structural report on the Shih Chien Building and the Shih Chien Hall, which were damaged in the 921 Earthquake in 1999.
The buildings have been valued at between NT$500 million and NT$600 million.
The KMT had promised the Taipei City Government that it would donate the five pieces of property in the city to it, but yesterday party officials agreed to donate them to the state should the ministry find the measure feasible. The lots are estimated to be worth about NT$400 million.
Government officials tried to convince the KMT to expand the scope of the negotiating list but to no avail.
The finance ministry would like to see a negotiation mechanism set up to decide how the KMT returns those assets it has already disposed of. It also wants the KMT to include properties owned by party-owned enterprises such as the Broadcasting Corp of China (BCC), the Central Motion Picture Corp, Hua Hsia Investment Holding Co and Central Investment Holding Co.
Hua Hsia has between NT$8 billion and NT$9 billion in KMT assets, while Central Investment had more than NT$24 billion in trust under First Credit Suisse Boston.
KMT officials, however, argued that transactions of those party-owned enterprises are out of their control because they are private corporations.
"If the Democratic Progressive Party government wants to put its hands on KMT-owned businesses, it should take the case to court and let the court decide," said Y.R. Lee (
"They're not a judge and we're definitely not an ATM machine for the finance ministry," Lee said.
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