The Ministry of National Defense may have illegally benefited a retired top general by awarding him prime real estate in downtown Taipei, according to a DPP legislator.
Lawmaker Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) yesterday accused the ministry of granting former defense minister Wu Shih-wen (伍世文) the right to purchase an apartment in the Kuoyun Hsincheng (國運新城) residential complex in 1999, even though he was not qualified for the purchase.
Located near Ta-an park, the complex was built by the ministry on the site of a former military compound.
The ministry has allotted all of the 34-ping apartments in the complex to former and current top generals including Wu. The building contains 14 apartments of that size.
Luo yesterday made public an investigation from the ministry showing that Wu had previously disclosed ownership of an apartment in Neihu under his name and another in Ta-an district under his wife's name. Government officials are required to disclose their private properties.
However, in his application for the purchase, Wu claimed that neither he, his wife nor his children owned any property.
Luo accused the former minister of lying in his application and the ministry of dereliction in its review. Wu was vice minister of defense when he filed the application.
The general served as defense minister from May 2000 to February this year. He is now a senior adviser to the president.
Luo cast doubt on the ministry's price for the apartments, which he said was far lower than the market price in the area. According to Luo, the ministry sold the units to top officials for NT$320,000 per ping, about half the market price of NT$600,000 to NT$700,000 per ping.
Regulations allow the generals to sell the units on the market five years after the purchase.
By giving preferential treatment to its generals, the ministry is ignoring the 34,000 professional officers and servicemen in the armed forces who do not have their own homes, Luo said.
In addition to Wu, the other 13 generals who purchased the apartments owned other housing, according to the Chinese-language media.
Luo accused the ministry of setting fuzzy ownership rules to benefit its top brass.
The lawmaker added that construction of the complex in 1997 in itself may have violated new regulations adopted a year earlier.
The regulations stipulate that tracts of land formerly used as military compounds should be sold. The ministry followed an earlier set of guidelines and built the residential complex, according to Luo.
In response to the allegations, Wu issued a statement late yesterday blaming the incident on his assistants.
The retired general said his assistants erred in the application process by failing to check whether he owned property.
"As for the purchase in the Kuoyun Hsincheng residential complex, since I had been concentrating on my public duty, I simply mandated my assistants to fill out the application form," Wu said in the statement.
"When they were filling out the form, they indicated that `my wife, my unmarried, adult children and myself have no housing property' without checking with me," Wu added.
Wu said the matter was simply an administrative mistake.
In an effort to prove his innocence, Wu said that the property declaration he gave the Control Yuan listed all the real estate that he and his wife own.
Wu also expressed his regret for failing to review the application form filled out by his assistants.
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