National Women’s League assets worth NT$38.5 billion (US$1.32 billion), which were frozen in February, would be confiscated by the state if investigations determine them to be illegally acquired, the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee said.
The committee in February determined the league to be a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-affiliated organization and lodged formal complaints against former league chairwoman Cecilia Koo (辜嚴倬雲) and her daughter Koo Huai-ju (辜懷如) for allegedly destroying records.
Cecilia Koo in May last year moved 170 boxes containing league documents and accounts to a warehouse owned by the Koo family-operated Taiwan Cement Corp. In December last year, Koo Huai-ju and family assistant Liu Kai-li (劉凱理) reportedly destroyed most of the records with a paper shredder.
The committee said it filed formal complaints with the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office against the two women and one employee for destroying the documents and obstructing its investigation after league employees testified that they were instructed to pack up league records in May last year.
A trial has been scheduled for Wednesday at which league deputy secretary-general Nancy Nee (汲宇荷) and league head of general affairs Chu Ai-na (朱愛娜) are to appear as witnesses, the committee said, adding that case defendant Cecilia Koo has yet to return from the US, where she has been staying.
Initial investigations into records from the past 10 years have already uncovered that the league transferred funds to the KMT over this period, the committee said, adding that five recovered boxes of documents showed that the KMT supplied the majority of military taxes and surcharges that were the league’s main source of income from 1955 to 1989.
Investigations of records from 1960 to 1989 show that the league’s income from military taxes and surcharges was not as much as the public perceived it to be, the committee said, adding that the league had other sources of revenue, receiving donations from theater ticket sales, the textile industry and bank interest, among other sources.
The league used the military taxes and surcharges to generate interest, rather than using the money to assist troops, as was intended, the committee said, adding that the league could earn annual interest of up to 10 percent during the economic boom years.
“Revenue from military taxes and surcharges was supposed to be spent on military barracks and on the troops… Where did the extra funds go?” committee spokeswoman Shih Chin-fang (施錦芳) said.
After the taxes and surcharges were discontinued in 1989, the league was asked by authorities to return unused funds, but it refused to do so, Shih said.
The donations made to the league are seen by some as tributes paid to [Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) wife and league founder] Soong Mayling (宋美齡), Shih said.
“They just spent the money however they wanted, nobody dared to pressure them to hand it over,” she said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching