Former National Women’s League chairwoman Cecilia Koo (辜嚴倬雲) yesterday said her daughter had only been retrieving personal belongings from her office, after the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee questioned Koo’s third-oldest daughter in connection with the league’s missing financial records.
The committee on Feb. 1 declared that the league is a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) affiliate, after the league’s representatives voted not to sign a government-proposed administrative contract.
The contract would have seen the league voluntarily dissolve itself and donate 90 percent of its total assets, or about NT$34.3 billion (US$1.17 billion), to state coffers.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The committee has since summoned several league officials for questioning, including Cecilia Koo’s third daughter, Koo Huai-ju (辜懷如).
Koo Huai-ju called a news conference in the late afternoon in Taipei and issued a written statement authored by her mother.
In the statement, Cecilia Koo said she told Koo Huai-ju early last year to collect her personal belongings from the league’s headquarters and denied ever ordering league employees to hide or destroy records.
She said she went to the US in October last year for a medical procedure and two of her daughters kept her company.
During the trip, she told her daughters to dispose all of her belongings at the office, save for objects of sentimental value to them, she said.
“It is accurate that … [Koo] Huai-ju, under my instructions, dealt with the personal effects that I asked her to remove from my office at the National Women’s League,” she wrote.
However, she said she had never instructed her colleagues at the league to remove “any non-personal items” and that she had not “given orders or instructions” about the handling of league records “since the end of last year.”
Cecilia Koo added that her decision to not want to have anything to do with the league was informed by the controversies surrounding it, the death of her youngest son, as well as personal health issues and mental exhaustion, all of which occurred last year.
“As I did not want to see or hear anything related to the affairs of the league, I repeatedly told my daughter that she should, at her earliest convenience, go to the league and pack my belongings, which had accumulated over the years that I had worked for the league,” she said.
Koo was on Dec. 22 last year removed by the Ministry of the Interior after she refused to sign the contract and was later succeeded by Joanna Lei (雷倩).
Assets committee spokeswoman Shih Chin-fang (施錦芳) yesterday confirmed that the committee questioned Koo Huai-ju, league deputy secretary-general Nancy Nee (汲宇荷), Cecilia Koo’s secretary, surnamed Lee (李), and accountants and treasurers for the organization.
They were questioned as part of the committee’s probe into the disappearance of all of the league’s financial records before 2006.
The missing documents include records of the league’s use of the Military Benefit Tax, a tariff levied on the US dollar value of all imported goods from 1955 to 1989 that provided most of the funding for the league’s charity work, she said.
The committee is focusing its inquiry on verifying the available records and recovering the records that predate 2006, Shih said, adding that more of the league’s personnel could be summoned if the committee deems it necessary.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
Taiwan will now have four additional national holidays after the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment today, which also made Labor Day a national holiday for all sectors. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their majority in the Legislative Yuan to pass the amendment to the Act on Implementing Memorial Days and State Holidays (紀念日及節日實施辦法), which the parties jointly proposed, in its third and final reading today. The legislature passed the bill to amend the act, which is currently enforced administratively, raising it to the legal level. The new legislation recognizes Confucius’ birthday on Sept. 28, the
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS