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KMT plans to sue over asset accusations

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) announced yesterday that it would sue the Cabinet for the accusations it had made about KMT party assets in an online report unveiled by the Cabinet yesterday.

"We will sue the Cabinet for each wrong accusation in the report," KMT Spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) said yesterday.

The party also said that in creating the Web site, the Cabinet had wrongfully used government resources in order to benefit the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Su was referring to the Web site introduced by the Cabinet yesterday, which includes detailed information on the government's campaign to recover the KMT's stolen assets.

"The Cabinet accessed the KMT asset records at the Ministry of Finance. It failed to stay neutral and did not separate the government from the DPP," said Chang Che-shen, KMT Administration and Management Committee Director-General Chang Che-chen (張哲琛) said yesterday.

The online project is a ploy to help Premier Su Tseng-chang's (蘇貞昌) campaign for the presidency, Chang said.

The KMT will also carry out former party chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) promise to dispose of the Central Investment Holding Co (中投), the only remaining KMT-owned company, by June, and will not own any companies in the future, he said.

KMT Secretary-General Wu Den-yi (吳敦義) said that the party was sincerely working to resolve its assets issue and urged the DPP not to use the issue to attack the KMT in the upcoming legislative and presidential elections.

"We are dealing with the issue now, but the DPPthreatened our potential buyers and criticized each deal. Please do not repress our efforts for electoral purposes," he said.

At the unveiling of the Web site earlier yesterday, Premier Su said: "The KMT is the richest political party in the world. Its stolen assets, which are worth approximately NT$45 billion [US$1.4 billion], belong to the public and should be returned to the public. We are just doing what we are supposed to do."

The Web site can be found at igpa.nat.gov.tw.

"We hope that more people will learn how the KMT has treated Taiwanese unfairly in the past from the Web site," he said.

The Cabinet sent a proposed statute governing the disposition of assets improperly obtained by political parties (政黨不當取得財產處理條例) to the legislature in 2002, but the legislature has not taken any action on it, he added.

Minister without Portfolio Hsu Chih-hsiung (許志雄) is responsible for the the government's project to recover the KMT's stolen assets.

He said the Cabinet has been working on the project ever since the Democratic Progressive Party became the ruling party in 2000.

In a report, Hsu wrote that the KMT's stolen assets can be divided into five categories, which include real estate, businesses, taxes that have not been paid, unpaid mortgages and illegitimate bonuses that were paid to officials.

The National Property Administration said the KMT's real estate is worth at least NT$24.3 billion and that the party's businesses are worth more than NT$18.1 billion.

The property administration also said that the KMT is estimated to owe the government NT$2.4 billion in unpaid taxes.

Between 1961 and 1970, the KMT borrowed NT$160 million from the central bank, but the debt was never paid off, it said.

A total of 581 KMT officials had also been paid NT$294 million in pensions, which they were not qualified for because they were not government officials, as of the end of last year.
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