Proceeds totaling NT$1.02 billion (US$36.7 million) from recovered ill-gotten Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) assets and an administrative settlement are to be placed in a fund in the first quarter of next year, the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee said.
The committee on Saturday said that it had so far recovered NT$75.89 million in unfairly or illegally acquired assets, as well as NT$950 million from a settlement with Central Motion Pictures Corp (CMPC, 中影公司).
The film studio on Aug. 24 agreed to hand over 330 films and NT$950 million, representing the amount CMPC was undervalued when it was in 2006 sold by Central Investment Co, a KMT affiliate.
Photo: Lee Hsin-fang, Taipei Times
The committee had initially frozen NT$11.8 billion of CMPC’s assets, which the studio appealed. The parties later reached a settlement agreeing to return the undervalued amount from the 2006 sale and transfer ownership of the films to the government in exchange for the committee repealing the company’s designation as a KMT affiliate, and unfreezing its remaining assets. The Taipei High Administrative Court recognized the settlement on Sept. 17.
The Transitional Justice Commission outlined possible uses for the fund: providing therapy for victims of political violence; establishing service centers to care for the survivors of political persecution; a reward system for those who preserve historical sites related to the White Terror period; and a database for records related to political persecution, it said.
After the commission concludes in May, other government agencies that handle transitional justice work could apply to use the fund, it said.
Commission member Frank Wang (王增勇) said that the commission had been unable to establish a fund with the recovered assets, as previously it had only recovered about NT$10 million.
The commission was concerned that if a fund is not established before it concludes, it might not be possible to do so later, Wang said.
The commission must wait until cases related to the recovered assets complete judicial procedures before the money can be used, committee spokesman Sun Pin (孫斌) said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS