The Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee yesterday designated Central Motion Picture Corp (CMPC, 中央電影公司) an affiliate of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and moved to freeze its assets totaling NT$11.8 billion (US$381.04 million).
The committee concluded that the firm’s personnel, finance and operations were controlled by the KMT before it was undersold, committee Chairman Lin Feng-jeng (林峯正) said.
“For instance, the sixth volume of a special collection of KMT-owned enterprises, which was published by the cultural affairs division of the party’s Central Committee in October 1972, clearly listed CMPC as a KMT-owned business,” Lin told a news conference.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Lin also cited a business registration document that CMPC’s predecessor — Taiwan Film Enterprise Co (臺灣電影事業) — filed with the Ministry of Economic Affairs in 1953, in which the company called itself a “KMT-owned enterprise, with all of its shareholders appointed by the party’s [then] Central Financial Affairs Committee, and it is not a privately held company.”
CMPC listed Japanese-owned theaters that were taken over by the KMT as capital, showing the link between the party and the company, as well as the influence the KMT enjoyed due to its absolute rule, Lin said.
About 82.56 percent of CMPC’s shares in April 2006 were sold to Lor Yu-chen (羅玉珍) and Chuang Wan-chun (莊婉均) at NT$65 per share, or about NT$3.14 billion, Lin said.
The sale was undervalued by at least NT$1.8 billion, as the value of the 330 films that CMPC produced and the three main buildings it owned were not accurately estimated, Lin added.
The majority of the firm’s current assets come from the three buildings, Lin said, adding that operations of the four movie theaters it runs across the nation would not be affected by the decision.
The company has been asked to send representatives to the committee tomorrow to negotiate how its business is to be handled, he said, adding that the next step is to determine whether its assets were illegally acquired by the KMT.
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) criticized the move as politically motivated, saying that it is attempting to distract from the government’s poor performance ahead of the Nov. 24 local elections.
Hung also said that the committee’s process is far from acceptable, as it only held one public hearing and focused on whether the share price was reasonable.
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