Environmental groups yesterday filed an application with the Cabinet’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee requesting an investigation into whether the land on which state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan plans to build a liquefied natural gas terminal had been obtained legally.
CPC plans to build a gas terminal off the coast of Datan Borough (大潭) in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音) and expects it to start supplying gas to state-run Taiwan Power Co’s Datan Power Plant from 2022.
Environmentalists working to protect Datan’s ecosystem from damage by the project have recently shifted their focus to CPC’s allegedly questionable holding.
The coast belongs to the public and should not have been sold, as stipulated by the Land Act (土地法), Taoyuan Local Union director Pan Chong-cheng (潘忠政) told a news conference at the legislature in Taipei yesterday.
However, Tung Ting Gas Corp in 2003 bought the land for NT$1 billion (US$33.9 million at the current exchange rate) and CPC in 2016 acquired Tung Ting for about NT$2.2 billion after the latter failed to obtain the rights to transmit natural gas, he said.
The deal was possibly related to the KMT’s ill-gotten assets, given that 47.3 percent of Tung Ting’s shares were held by China Development Financial Holding Corp, which was owned by the party, he said.
A political party’s property could be considered ill-gotten if it was attained through disproportionate means after Aug. 15 1945, lawyer Chen Hsien-cheng (陳憲政) said, citing Article 5 of 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).
Transitional justice should come before environmental justice, New Power Party Legislator Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said, calling on the government to clarify the legitimacy of CPC’s asset before continuing the project’s environmental impact assessment.
Taiwan Water Resources Protection Union director Jennifer Nien (粘麗玉) said the group would also petition the Control Yuan today to investigate the case.
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