Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) yesterday said that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Steve Chan (詹啟賢) had talked to him about signing an administrative contract concerning the handing over of the party’s ill-gotten assets, but backed out at the last minute.
Koo appeared for the first time in the legislature yesterday in his capacity as the committee’s chairman to oversee its budget proposal, but Internal Administration Committee members showed more interest in the reports of local media outlets that Koo had met with Chan several times and the two were close to striking a deal, before it was called off by the KMT.
Responding to questions from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟), Koo said Chan had told him that he was fully authorized by KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) to negotiate with the settlement committee.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
“Chan came forward in early October and said he agreed with the idea of ‘returning [ill-gotten] party assets to zero’ and hoped to arrive at an administrative contract with the committee that would grant the handover of its shares in Central Investment Co and its subsidiary Hsinyutai to the state, even though 45 percent of the stocks would have to be transferred in the form of a ‘donation,’” Koo said.
Koo agreed to the terms, saying that as long as the transfer was made to the state, he had no problem with how the it was made.
The contract also had provisions concerning the expected money to be made from the disposal of Central Investment Co assets, which were to be put in a special account for the welfare of KMT workers, and where the donations were to destined to end up — in special accounts for social welfare including the long-term care services.
“What I do not understand is that while Chan claimed to have been authorized by Hung, the chairwoman refused to underwrite the contract in the end,” Koo said, adding that there were allegedly different opinions on the matter within the KMT.
Koo said while Chan was sincere in hoping to settle the assets issue, later developments showed that the KMT’s pledge to deal with its party assets was just “empty talk.”
He also denied that there was criticism from the Executive Yuan condemning him for making rash moves, as some of the local media had alleged.
In response to KMT lawmakers describing court rulings against the settlement committee’s decisions to freeze and transfer the party’s assets as a failure, Koo said that while the court has made some interpretations differently from the committee, it has nevertheless rejected the KMT’s petition to overturn the committee’s decision to identify the two companies as ill-gotten party assets.
Yesterday morning’s question-and-answer session of the Internal Administration Committee saw few KMT lawmakers present, contrary to the DPP’s expectation of a fiery exchange between Koo and KMT lawmakers.
KMT caucus convener Sufin Siluko (廖國棟) told reporters that the caucus had no prior knowledge that party headquarters had agreed to negotiate an administrative contract with the settlement committee.
“Headquarters failed to provide us information on the matter. We did not know about the closed-door negotiation and the contract. It is unfair to us who are on the frontline of the battlefield if we were not well-informed beforehand,” he said, adding that he had only come to know about the talks and the deal when they were revealed by the media.
“So we had to let the DPP lawmakers give the first questions so we KMT lawmakers could know where and how to attack and defend,” he said.
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