The Executive Yuan’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee yesterday rejected Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers’ accusations that its field investigation into the party’s investment in a Palauan hotel had become a tourist trip.
At a morning news conference in Taipei yesterday, KMT caucus secretary-general William Tseng (曾銘宗) said that two committee employees took a four-day trip to Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — in August last year to inspect the Palasia Hotel Palau, of which the KMT-controlled Central Investment Co and its subsidiary own 80 percent.
“However, the 70-plus page trip report submitted by the committee talked about diplomacy and tourism, which are not even remotely related to its duties,” Tseng said, adding that most of the report’s content were pictures and appendixes, and that not a single word in its half-page of feedback and suggestions was about the committee’s actual work.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
The report raised questions about the “credibility of the committee’s future decisions,” as it was the main document on which the committee based its rejection of the company’s request to sell the hotel, Tseng said.
He said if the committee refuses to apologize, he would confront Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) at the next legislative session and ask him if he would accept such a sloppy report.
KMT Legislator Tung Hui-chen (童惠珍) said that the report served as proof that the committee was established by the Democratic Progressive Party for the mere purpose of bringing down the KMT.
Shortly after the news conference, committee spokeswoman Shih Chin-fang (施錦芳) rejected the KMT lawmakers’ allegations, saying that the purpose of the trip was to inspect the KMT’s overseas assets, not sightseeing.
The committee decided to take the trip after Central Investment criticized it for rejecting the firm’s request to sell the hotel without first sending someone to inspect it, Shih said.
Committee staff made the trip along with representatives from Central Investment, Shih said, adding that they did not have any set plans for the first day, and met with Palauan Bureau of Tourism officials, tourism proprietors and representatives of the Palasia Hotel Palau on the second day.
On the third day, they met with Taiwan’s overseas government staff and agricultural enterprises, before attending a banquet in the afternoon celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Palasia Hotel Palau’s establishment to investigate the hotel’s operations, Shih said.
The portion about tourism in the committee’s report mostly concerned committee staff’s meetings with the Palauan Bureau of Tourism’s director and the Palasia Hotel Palau’s general manager, she said.
The celebratory banquet was also attended by Palauan Vice President Raynold Oilouch and Central Investment chairman Gordon Chen (陳樹), she added.
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
RSS