New Power Party (NPP) lawmakers yesterday urged the government to launch an investigation into the assets owned by the National Women’s League, which they said is affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
During a legislative session on Monday, Minister of the Interior Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮) said the ministry does not rule out dissolving the league for its failure to comply with the ministry’s request to disclose its assets and provide financial statements.
The ministry should coordinate with the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee to handle the league’s assets, which might have been obtained illegally during the KMT’s authoritarian regime, NPP Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said yesterday.
According to the Civil Associations Act (人民團體法), the ministry has the authority to replace the management of a civil organization if it fails to comply with the law before revoking its license and looking into its financial status, while the assets of a dissolved organization would be transferred to supervisory government agencies, Huang said.
A ministry report about the league’s financial status drafted during former minister of the interior Chen Wei-zen’s (陳威仁) term has never been updated, suggesting that the ministry has done little in requiring the league to disclose its assets, NPP Legislator Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said, calling for stricter enforcement of the law.
The league has been accused of having taken billions of New Taiwan dollars in donations for military veterans between 1955 and 1989, but has not disclosed the donations even though the ministry has asked it to provide the information multiple times.
“The only possible reason I can imagine for the league to refuse to disclose its assets is that it is too opaque,” committee Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said.
“The committee will exercise its investigative power when necessary,” Koo added.
While the league has been avoiding questions about its financial status, hearings have yet to be held to determine if the league is linked with the KMT, he said.
The league has asked the KMT to make a public statement and repudiate the alleged links between them.
In a document addressed to the KMT earlier this month, the league said it has functioned independently of the KMT since its inception.
However, while the league has often been confused with the Women’s Department of the KMT, some KMT members have misrepresented the league as a KMT affiliate, allowing critics of the league to make false accusations, the document said.
The league reiterated that it is not a KMT-affiliated organization 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) is not applicable to it.
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Hu Wen-chi (胡文琦) yesterday denied alleged links between the party and the league, saying that the government should not pursue an innocent organization as part of its political vendetta.
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