Yuanlih Construction Enterprise Group (元利建設) is suspected of having illegally profited from its 2005 purchase of land in Taipei’s Muzha District (木柵) from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the Executive Yuan’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee said yesterday as it continues its investigation into the KMT’s original acquisition of the land.
Yeh Sung-jen (葉頌仁), whose father owned four plots of land on which the KMT built its Institute on Policy Research and Development, appealed to the committee for a ruling after he failed to convince a court that KMT authorities forced his father to sell the land in 1962.
The case is viewed as an important indicator of how the committee will handle illicit asset cases that have been rejected in court.
A committee report yesterday found that the KMT’s 2005 sale of the institute’s compound to Yuanlih for NT$4.25 billion (US$140 million) represented a loss of more than NT2 billion below its market value.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for next Wednesday.
According to the committee’s report, when the KMT in May 2005 put the Zhongxing Shanzhuang (中興山莊) plot up for sale, an appraisal report by China Credit Information Service (CCIS, 中華徵信所) valued the land at NT$5.87 billion.
While the KMT originally demanded more than the appraisal value, it gradually dropped its price after only attracting bids from Yuanlih, the report said, adding that former KMT administration and management committee director Chang Che-chen (張哲琛) in August 2005 advised then-Taipei mayor and KMT chairman-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to drop the price to NT$4.25 billion because of the low offers.
Ma signed off on the decision the next day and the KMT sold most of the property to the firm the same month, with a portion donated to the Taipei City Government for the relocation of an elementary school, the assets committee said.
The committee cited an earlier Special Investigation Division report quoting Yuanlih executive Lin Ming-hsiung (林敏雄) as saying that there was a substantial difference between the NT$300,000 per ping (3.3m2) bidding price for the land and its market value, stating that the firm had bid NT$400,000 per ping for neighboring Bank of Taiwan land.
The difference with the NT$400,000 market price was huge, the committee said, estimating that the firm acquired the land for NT$2.4 billion less than its market value.
In response, Yuanlih vice president Wu Li-ching (吳麗謹) yesterday said that the firm acquired the property for NT$460,000 per ping and that no final determination should be made before committee hearings concluded.
She said her firm had cooperated in the committee’s investigation by preparing relevant documents and that it plans to testify before the committee next week.
Additional reporting by Hsu Yi-ping and Abraham Gerber
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by