The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said it is considering reopening investigations into the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) sale of the Broadcasting Corp of China (BCC) in 2006 due to a potentially illegal hidden clause in the contract between the KMT and BCC chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康).
The clause says that if the buyer pays less than 90 percent of the selling price, KMT-controlled Hua Hsia Investment Holding Co (華夏投資公司), with which the BCC’s shares originally resided, would have the right to appoint directors, supervisors and financial officers to the BCC.
The BCC must not make those appointments without the consent of Hua Hsia, the clause states.
Any lending, endorsement or expenditure of at least NT$10 million (US$327,268), as well as the hires and dismissals of financial officers at the BCC must gain the approval of Hua Hsia, the clause says.
The clause could indicate that the KMT has not completely withdrawn from the broadcaster’s operations and that it has contravened legislation barring political parties, government agencies and the military from involvement in the operation of media outlets, NCC spokesman Wong Po-tsung (翁柏宗) said yesterday.
If the KMT has continued to appoint at least half of the board members at the BCC according to the hidden clause, that would mean that it has retained effective control over the company and broken the law, in which case the NCC has three options, legal experts said.
It could fine the KMT between NT$200,000 and NT$2 million under Article 44-2 of the Radio and Television Act (廣播電視法) and order the KMT to withdraw completely from the BCC, they said.
It could repeal, in part or in full, the administrative injunction it issued to authorize the sale under the Administrative Procedure Act (行政程序法) on grounds that Jaw broke his promise to protect his company from political interventions.
If Jaw presented a fake sales contract to the NCC, misleading it into issuing the injunction, the NCC could also revoke the injunction that approved the sale, they said.
The law would require that the BCC be restored to its original state, meaning all its shares would either have to be transferred back to Hua Hsia, which has closed down, or to the KMT, which would raise the issue of ill-gotten party assets and result in the BCC being returned to the government, experts said.
The KMT’s underselling of the company to Jaw has sparked speculations that the sale was rigged. Such suspicions are aggravated reports that former KMT legislator Kao Yu-jen (高育仁) offered NT$5 billion to buy the BCC, but then-KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was determined to sell it to Jaw for NT$1 billion.
Faced with the NCC’s doubts over the “opaque” transaction he made with the KMT, Jaw in 2006 cited a non-disclosure agreement and declined to divulge the details, but promised the NCC that he would keep political influence at bay at the BCC, after which the NCC approved the transfer of stock rights.
The agreed price between the KMT and Jaw was NT$5.7 billion, but Jaw only paid NT$1 billion, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said in an indictment against Ma.
NCC officials have said they suspect that lawyer and BCC director Chen Ming-hui (陳明暉) and financial officer Lung Ming-chun (龍明春) were appointed by Hua Hsia to help the KMT retain its influence in the BCC.
Even though Jungli Investment Co chairman Albert Yu (余建新) was the owner of Hua Hsia on paper, the KMT was Hua Hsia’s de facto operator and BCC has remained a KMT-controlled company even after the sale to Jaw, the indictment said.
As the NCC suspects that the KMT has broken the law and that Jaw presented it with a false contract, and as the indictment has uncovered new facts about the case, the NCC has requested a copy of the sale contract from the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee and is mulling restarting its probe into the case, Wong 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