The Taiwan High Court yesterday reversed earlier verdicts on property fraud involving three properties in downtown Taipei, ruling that multiple government agencies were accountable for wrongfully approving a false inheritance claim by fraudsters and that agencies should pay NT$650 million (US$21.3 million) in compensation to the rightful heirs of the mishandled properties.
Wang Chu-chi (王諸齊), the uncle of a former member of the Council of Grand Justices, Wang Tse-chien (王澤鑑), died in 1991 and left three properties totaling about 410 ping (1,355m2) in Taipei’s Daan District (大安), with a total value estimated at NT$450 million as of 2003, when the properties were misappropriated, the Wang family said.
The Wang family did not inherit the properties immediately following Wang Chu-chi’s death, and a fraudster impersonating Wang Chu-chi’s eldest son — who lived in Canada at the time — with forged identification obtained all the legal documents required to inherit the properties from several government agencies, including the household registration offices at Taipei’s Songshan District (松山) and New Taipei City’s Xindian District (新店), the National Taxation Bureau of Taipei and the Taipei City Daan Land Office, the Wangs said.
The fraudster sold the properties to 11 buyers, who in turn donated the properties to the government for tax reductions, with the properties to be repurposed as public roads, the Wangs said.
The Wangs later reported the case to the Investigation Bureau, but the fraudster and his accomplices had already disappeared, they said.
Blaming the land office and other agencies, the Wang family took the case to court in 2003 and requested the offices involved pay NT$450 million — the estimated value of the properties as of 2003 — in compensation, they said.
The first three trials ruled against the Wang family, saying that there was no direct causality between the agencies’ handling and the misappropriation of properties, which resulted from identity theft and impersonation.
However, the High Court ruled that the there was an apparent dereliction of duty by the land office in failing to verify the documentation — which was obviously flawed — presented by the impersonator, as the office failed to consult the issuers of the documents, in contravention of the Land Act (土地法).
The High Court ruled that the land office and related agencies should pay about NT$650 million — the NT$449 million of the properties’ estimated value plus interest — in compensation to the Wang family.
“How could a mass of land disappear when its owners were simply staying at home?” Wang family lawyer Yang Kuo-hung (楊國宏) said. “There was apparent dereliction of duty on the part of the government. Is that not cause for compensation?”
“[I] was very relieved when justice was finally served,” said the wife of Wang Pei-chi (王培基), Wang Chu-chi’s third son.
Daan Land Office Commissioner Kao Li-an (高麗安) said that the forged documents were such that reviewers could not detect any irregularity.
Taipei Department of Land Deputy Commissioner Pan Yu-nu (潘玉女) said that the department would appeal the ruling.
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