The Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee is to hold a hearing on Tuesday next week to determine whether three properties under the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) name should be considered ill-gotten assets.
The buildings on one property once housed the KMT’s former cultural affairs department. The Housheng building, the original headquarters of the party’s Department of Productive Enterprise, and the Chongsheng building, which used to house the party’s Taipei chapter headquarters, are on the other two properties.
The committee said that it wished to clarify whether the properties were obtained by the KMT in contravention of the bounds of a political party, or other democratic or legal principles.
Photo: Taipei Times file photo
If the properties — which have already been sold — were ill-gotten, it wanted to know whether the state should demand that the KMT pay it for them and how such compensation should be calculated, the committee added.
The building housing the cultural affairs department originally belonged to the Taipei City Government and was in 1950 converted into dormitories and leased to the now-defunct Taiwan Provincial Government’s Department of Public Construction, it said.
The KMT had occupied state property illegally and did not return it to the Taipei City Government, even after the provincial government had relocated to Taichung, the committee said.
The party had also demolished a building on the property that was built in the Japanese era to build a high-rise building, which housed the cultural affairs department and the Ministry of National Defense’s Psychological Warfare Department, the committee said.
While the KMT had signed a lease with the city government, it overstayed the lease period and occupied the building illegally up until the 1980s, after which the party, which could not purchase the land itself, bought the land under the names of former premier Hsu Li-te (徐立德) and former Control Yuan member Wu Shui-yun (吳水雲), the committee said.
The KMT allegedly made a profit of NT$650 million (US$21.59 million at the current exchange rate) when it sold the building to Universal Real Estate Development Co in 2000, it said.
The KMT also obtained ownership of the Housheng building — despite it originally belonging to Taiwan Power Co — and sold the property to a third party in about 2000, the committee said.
Alain Robert, known as the "French Spider-Man," praised Alex Honnold as exceptionally well-prepared after the US climber completed a free solo ascent of Taipei 101 yesterday. Robert said Honnold's ascent of the 508m-tall skyscraper in just more than one-and-a-half hours without using safety ropes or equipment was a remarkable achievement. "This is my life," he said in an interview conducted in French, adding that he liked the feeling of being "on the edge of danger." The 63-year-old Frenchman climbed Taipei 101 using ropes in December 2004, taking about four hours to reach the top. On a one-to-10 scale of difficulty, Robert said Taipei 101
Nipah virus infection is to be officially listed as a category 5 notifiable infectious disease in Taiwan in March, while clinical treatment guidelines are being formulated, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. With Nipah infections being reported in other countries and considering its relatively high fatality rate, the centers on Jan. 16 announced that it would be listed as a notifiable infectious disease to bolster the nation’s systematic early warning system and increase public awareness, the CDC said. Bangladesh reported four fatal cases last year in separate districts, with three linked to raw date palm sap consumption, CDC Epidemic Intelligence
US climber Alex Honnold left Taiwan this morning a day after completing a free-solo ascent of Taipei 101, a feat that drew cheers from onlookers and gained widespread international attention. Honnold yesterday scaled the 101-story skyscraper without a rope or safety harness. The climb — the highest urban free-solo ascent ever attempted — took just more than 90 minutes and was streamed live on Netflix. It was covered by major international news outlets including CNN, the New York Times, the Guardian and the Wall Street Journal. As Honnold prepared to leave Taiwan today, he attracted a crowd when he and his wife, Sanni,
Taiwanese and US defense groups are collaborating to introduce deployable, semi-autonomous manufacturing systems for drones and components in a boost to the nation’s supply chain resilience. Taiwan’s G-Tech Optroelectronics Corp subsidiary GTOC and the US’ Aerkomm Inc on Friday announced an agreement with fellow US-based Firestorm Lab to adopt the latter’s xCell, a technology featuring 3D printers fitted in 6.1m container units. The systems enable aerial platforms and parts to be produced in high volumes from dispersed nodes capable of rapid redeployment, to minimize the risk of enemy strikes and to meet field requirements, they said. Firestorm chief technology officer Ian Muceus said
RSS