The Cabinet is to form a ministerial task force this week to handle the transfer of two investment companies owned by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which last week were designated as “ill-gotten assets,” Executive Yuan spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said on Monday.
Transferring ownership of Central Investment Co and Hsinyutai Co to the state is a complicated process as the two companies have a large number of subsidiaries and affiliated firms, Hsu said.
The process involves the transfer of assets, including methods of securing the transfer, personnel changes, disposition of seized assets, and the nomination of new responsible persons and executives, the spokesman said.
Premier Lin Chuan (林全) has appointed two ministers without portfolio to the task force, which will also include officials from the ministries of finance, labor, economic affairs, justice and the interior, as well as the National Development Council, Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics and the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration, Hsu said.
He did not name the two ministers.
“The group could be formed as early as the end of this week,” Hsu said.
The Cabinet’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee last week designated the two companies as “ill-gotten assets” that should be transferred to the state.
KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) said the party would take legal action against the seizure.
She criticized the committee for “its concentration of administrative, legislative and judicial powers,” and described the move to transfer the two firms to the state as dictatorial, a “violation of the law and the Constitution.”
If the companies are nationalized, the KMT would lose nearly all its assets, as most of its property, including its headquarters in Taipei, branch offices, local chapters and many other KMT-run enterprises are included in Central Investment’s portfolio.
The committee was established in August based on the Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例), which was enacted by the legislature in July.
According to the act, the committee is authorized to investigate, retroactively confiscate, and return or restore to the rightful owners all assets obtained by the KMT and its affiliated organizations since Aug. 15, 1945, when Japan handed over the assets under its control in Taiwan to the Republic of China.
The act assumes that all KMT assets, except for membership fees, political donations, government subsidies for its candidates running for public office and interest generated from these funds are “ill-gotten” and must be transferred to the state or returned to their rightful owners.
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