Financial documentation provided by the National Women’s League falls far short of legal requirements, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday, adding that the group submitted only one of four types of required documents.
“We have received the documents, but they are not complete, so we will ask them to make a supplementary filing,” Civil Affairs Department Deputy Director Luo Rui-ching (羅瑞卿) said.
While the league has provided 10 years of revenue and expenditure balance sheets, it has not provided any of the other required documents, which are a financial statement, a list of property holdings and an asset-liability balance sheet, he said.
The information provided was insufficient to draw conclusions about the league’s finances, he said, adding that the ministry would wait until the additional documents are provided before publicizing any information.
Despite its status as a political organization, the league has never made any of the legally required financial filings with the ministry, ignoring multiple requests from the ministry and promising to make filings only after officials went to league headquarters last week to investigate.
Founded by Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) wife Soong Mayling (宋美齡), the league’s assets have attracted scrutiny over allegations that it illegally profited from close ties to the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) authoritarian government, with the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee passing several resolutions calling on the ministry to force the league to open its books.
In contrast to last week’s high-profile investigation, the ministry’s response yesterday was subdued, with Luo saying the ministry has yet to decide on a deadline for the supplementary filing.
A ministry official said it has chosen to avoid actively discussing the filing due to yesterday’s death of former Taiwan Cement Corp chairman Leslie Koo (辜成允), who was the only living son of 91-year-old Cecilia Y. Koo (辜嚴倬雲), a former aide of Soong Mayling and long-time foundation head.
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