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.
Trips for more than 100,000 international and domestic air travelers could be disrupted as China launches a military exercise around Taiwan today, Taiwan’s Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) said yesterday. The exercise could affect nearly 900 flights scheduled to enter the Taipei Flight Information Region (FIR) during the exercise window, it added. A notice issued by the Chinese Civil Aviation Administration showed there would be seven temporary zones around the Taiwan Strait which would be used for live-fire exercises, lasting from 8am to 6pm today. All aircraft are prohibited from entering during exercise, it says. Taipei FIR has 14 international air routes and
Taiwan lacks effective and cost-efficient armaments to intercept rockets, making the planned “T-Dome” interception system necessary, two experts said on Tuesday. The concerns were raised after China’s military fired two waves of rockets during live-fire drills around Taiwan on Tuesday, part of two-day exercises code-named “Justice Mission 2025.” The first wave involved 17 rockets launched at 9am from Pingtan in China’s Fujian Province, according to Lieutenant General Hsieh Jih-sheng (謝日升) of the Office of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Intelligence at the Ministry of National Defense. Those rockets landed 70 nautical miles (129.6km) northeast of Keelung without flying over Taiwan,
City buses in Taipei and New Taipei City, as well as the Taipei MRT, would on Saturday begin accepting QR code payments from five electronic payment providers, the Taipei Department of Transportation said yesterday. The new option would allow passengers to use the “transportation QR code” feature from EasyWallet, iPass Money, iCash Pay, Jkopay or PXPay Plus. Passengers should open their preferred electronic payment app, select the “transportation code” — not the regular payment code — unlock it, and scan the code at ticket readers or gates, General Planning Division Director-General Liu Kuo-chu (劉國著) said. People should move through the
The Ministry of National Defense (MND) today released images of the military tracking China’s People's Liberation Army (PLA) movements during the latest round of Chinese drills around Taiwan. The PLA began "Justice Mission 2025" drills today, carrying out live-fire drills, simulated strikes on land and maritime targets, and exercises to blockade the nation's main ports. The exercises are to continue tomorrow, with the PLA announcing sea and air space restrictions for five zones around Taiwan for 10 hours starting from 8:30am. The ministry today released images showing a Chinese J-16 fighter jet tracked by a F-16V Block 20 jet and the
RSS