The Cabinet’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee is to submit new evidence concerning the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) allegedly questionable disposal of holdings in three media companies, which might spark the reopening of investigations into the transactions, three years after they ended with the conclusion that there was no impropriety.
The KMT was accused of selling Central Motion Pictures Corp (CMPC, 中央電影公司), Broadcasting Corp of China (BCC, 中廣公司) and China Television Co (CTV, 中視) at well below market prices in a bid to transfer party assets.
After an eight-year investigation, the now-defunct Special Investigation Division (SID) of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, in 2014 concluded that the sales were not illegal.
However, the SID never interviewed former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) over his role in the sales.
Following the inauguration of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration, the committee held hearings on the sales of real-estate owned by CMPC and BCC and interviewed KMT members at the firms involved in the transactions.
The investigation — which is ongoing — has cast doubt on the legitimacy of the transactions.
Committee members heard that CMPC chairman Kuo Tai-chiang (郭台強) “made a considerable amount of money from the CMPC sales, estimated at more than NT$10 billion [US$326.79 million],” suggesting illegal profiteering, sources said.
During the committee’s investigation into the sale of CMPC-owned real estate, an unidentified KMT member said the party was “nearly unable to collect the payment,” which was reminiscent of KMT Central Policy Committee executive director Alex Tsai’s (蔡正元) comment on Facebook that “someone sold the party assets, but could not collect the money.”
The assertions were never addressed in past judicial investigations into the CMPC sales.
The committee also heard that the KMT, when selling its BCC holdings, “was offered a price higher than what [BCC chairman] Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) would pay,” which suggests that the KMT sold the company to Jaw at an unreasonably low price, sources said.
The committee is still combing through SID reports and other investigation data, and its “conclusion would be released this week,” a committee member said yesterday, adding that it would hand over new evidence to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office and make a public statement.
The committee member said that then-KMT chairman Ma was the main decisionmaker in the sales of the three companies, and “it is Ma who is most responsible for clarifying the sales.”
The SID did not interview Ma as he was then in office, but the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office should reopen the investigation as “many KMT members have come forward and revealed [secrets of the sales], indicating that there were many questionable activities.”
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