The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) caucus yesterday panned Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) claim that he has resolved the issue of the party’s controversial assets, calling it a lie.
Chu said at the KMT’s weekly Central Standing Committee meeting on Wednesday that he has finished taking care of all of the party’s controversial assets, declaring that they are now all legal.
However, the TSU asserted that there are still at least 21 questionable properties.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
“Questions remain about KMT ownership of land or buildings used by 21 of its local chapters across the nation. These include the seven that the National Audit Office has designated in its annual report as being illegally occupied [by the KMT],” TSU caucus whip Lai Chen-chang (賴振昌) told a press conference.
“The KMT has obtained these properties through different means during the era when there was no boundary between the party and the government,” he said.
“It is easy to find questionable real-estate properties because there are registrations; however, we do not know how many more illegal assets the KMT has,” Lai added.
During the Martial Law period, the then-authoritarian KMT regime took over properties formerly held by the Japanese colonial government. Instead of listing all of them as national properties, the KMT took over some of them without going through due process.
Liu Shu-hui (劉淑惠), a representative of the National Audit Office, backed Lai’s assertions that the KMT had claimed some properties that should belong to the government.
“We made the report based on information reported by local governments,” Liu said. “We are now collecting rent from some of the properties, taking compensation for those illegally occupied [by the KMT], while some of the questionable properties are still going through lawsuits.”
TSU Legislator Yeh Chin-ling (葉津鈴) said that if the KMT is unable to prove that it has legally purchased a certain property from the government, “it should just return it.”
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