In an unusual move to strike back at the Executive Yuan’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday asked the committee to investigate and recover two plots of land in Nanjing, China, that the party once owned and are now controlled by Chinese authorities.
The KMT said in a news release that while combing through its old files, it found documents suggesting that the party once owned two plots of land — one 578,669m2 and the other 689,336m2 — in Nanjing.
The land was legally acquired by the party and is currently under the control of Chinese authorities, and the Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例) mandates the reporting of properties not currently under the direct control of a political party, the KMT said.
Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times
“The party therefore decided to abide by the act and report the land to the committee,” the KMT said.
“We kindly ask the committee to handle the matter in accordance with Article 6 of the act and thoroughly investigate whether the land was obtained by the KMT through illegitimate means to avoid raising concerns of a dereliction of duty,” it said.
The party also urged the committee to adhere to Article 25 of the act, which stipulates that the ill-gotten properties of a party or its affiliate should be returned to the government, and in cases in which such a return is not possible, comparable compensation should be paid instead.
The announcement of the discovery came just days after the Administrative Enforcement Agency on Tuesday auctioned one of the KMT’s staff dormitories on Taipei’s Jiaxing Street for NT$15.26 million (US$500,328).
The dormitory was put up for auction after the KMT failed to pay NT$864.88 million in compensation ordered by the committee for the party’s sales of 458 properties appropriated from the Japanese colonial government.
Asked for comment, committee spokeswoman Shih Chin-fang (施錦芳) yesterday lauded the KMT’s efforts to go through its historical records, an endeavor she said would be able to close the distance between the party and the committee if continued.
“However, the committee is somewhat confused, because at times the KMT claims that the act is unconstitutional, but at others it asks us to launch an investigation in accordance with the act,” Shih said.
In response to the KMT’s apparent attempt to put the committee in a difficult position, Shih said that as former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) of the KMT is to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in China next week, the party could ask Lien to negotiate the matter with Xi first.
As of noon yesterday, the committee had not received any documents from the KMT about the two plots of land, she said.
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