The Control Yuan on Tuesday night meted out a corrective measure against the Taipei City Government, with Control Yuan members citing the city’s “flawed” interpretation of law during the bidding process for the Syntrend Creative Park and accusing the Taipei Clean Government Committee of misleading the public into believing that the city had adopted a less advantageous option in contracting out the build-operate-transfer (BOT) project.
The Control Yuan on Tuesday passed a corrective measure proposed by Control Yuan members Lee Yueh-te (李月德), Chang Kuei-mei (仉桂美), and Chiang Ming-tsang (江明倉).
The Control Yuan said in the corrective report that the Taipei Department of Finance during former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin’s (郝龍斌) tenure issued a document suggesting that, as the BOT project is in a commercial district, it should be contracted out by soliciting tenders for surface rights, which would be lucrative for the city government.
However, as the land on which the commercial district is planned was allocated to the city by the National Property Administration (NPA) to build a parking lot, leasing it out by setting surface rights would be in violation of the National Property Act (國有財產法), in which case the land could be revoked, it said.
Although then-Taipei City Government secretary-general Lee Sush-der (李述德) later instructed that the project should be proceed within legal parameters set under the Act for Promotion of Public Participation in Infrastructure Projects (促進民間參與公共建設法), the document “created a hubbub” by misleading the public into believing that the city had incurred financial losses due to the project, it said.
This shows that the city had misinterpreted the law and was negligent in reviewing and approving its internal documents, the Control Yuan said.
The report said the Taipei Clean Government Committee — established by Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) — had wrongly criticized Lee Sush-der over his handling of the case by saying that Lee had cost the city at least NT$2 billion (US$64 million at current exchange rates) in losses by offering the project as a BOT contract instead of setting surface rights.
The committee made the accusation about Lee last year during its probe into what Ko termed “the five major cases of malpractice,” which included the Syntrend case.
The Control Yuan rejected examples given by the committee in an attempt to work out responsibility over the alleged loss.
Citing the case of Fubon Financial Holding Co’s lease of a plot of land coded “A25” in a prime commercial area of Xinyi District (信義), the Control Yuan said that examples given by the committee all pertained to land owned by the city, which by law can be leased out by setting superficies.
The department said it had not fully understood regulations governing the use of NPA-allocated land while assessing the BOT project, adding that it would humbly accept the Control Yuan’s correction.
Chang said the plot of land where the park is located was originally allocated to the city for a parking lot, and the park was proposed later to offset potential deficits from the parking lots’ operations.
She said that regulations governing BOT projects should be amended to regulate the proportionality between the main project and subordinate projects.
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