A group of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers has called for an investigation into the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) alleged fire sale of its stocks and party assets.
"The police and investigative authorities should probe into the transactions by the KMT, both in local stock and real estate markets and check to see if the former ruling party has completed these business transactions through underhand deals," Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (
At a press conference yesterday, Tsai and his colleagues made the call following local media reports that the KMT had done a large number of property and stock transactions in recent days in order to obtain sufficient funding for next year's presidential campaign.
According to the reports, the controversy started when an anonymous ranking official of the KMT's central standing committee complained that his party had sold some properties at extraordinarily low prices.
He especially pointed to the deal involving several floors in a party-owned building in downtown Taipei, which were sold last month to two KMT members -- Legislator Hsu Shu-po (
The KMT official also suspected that the former office building of the KMT Taipei City Chapter had been sold to a private enterprise at an unreasonable price.
The official charged that the KMT sold these properties for less than the market value and did so either to benefit certain buyers or to simply get rid of the assets at any cost.
DPP Legislator Lin Chung-cheng (
It should also explain why it has done so while its legislators have done everything they can to block legislation that would deal with political parties' assets that had been obtained improperly or illegally, he said.
Lin further charged that the KMT -- estimated to be the wealthiest political party in the world after governing the country for more than 50 years, during which time it pilfered state assets at will -- had profited by at least NT$176 billion through the transaction of its shares over past three years.
"It is unseemly conduct when the KMT has gained large sums of money from the local stock market on the one hand, while on the other hand it continues to cry about a financial predicament and blast the DPP government for its poor performance in economic development," Lin said.
In response, KMT legislative leader Lee Chia-chin (
"We will convince the public and other parties that the KMT is determined to resolve the asset controversy by public and transparent means," Lee said.
Chang Che-shen (張哲琛), director general of the KMT Administration and Management Committee, has denied the media report.
He vowed to tender his resignation if anything about his party's treatment of its assets proved to be illegal.
"We will do that since we realize that the KMT is very likely to be the ruling party after next year's election," he added.
But Control Yuan Member Huang Huang-hsiung (
Even if the KMT made the sales in accordance with laws, the deals were still debatable since the party's way of obtaining ownership of these buildings in the first place remained in dispute, Huang said.
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