The Taipei High Administrative Court yesterday ruled against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in two lawsuits initiated by the Cabinet’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee over three entities in Taipei with a combined worth of NT$16.38 billion (US$589.19 million at the current exchange rate).
The court’s decision deemed that two investment firms — Central Investment Co (中央投資公司) and Hsinyutai Co (欣裕台), worth a combined NT$15.6 billion — and one residential building — Daxiao Building (大孝大樓), worth NT$782 million — had been obtained by the KMT through illegal means.
The court ruled that the properties were ill-gotten party assets and prohibited the KMT from disposing of or transferring them, while company shares and the value of the properties are to be transferred to the state.
The KMT’s attorney Chang Shao-teng (張少騰) said that the party would likely appeal the decision.
In 2016, the committee, which was then headed by Wellington Koo (顧立雄), issued an administrative injunction through a disposition letter that the KMT needed to transfer all shareholding rights to the government.
A committee investigation found that the KMT had used illegally obtained assets to start the KMT-affiliated investment firms.
The KMT had contravened 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), which had been enacted to ensure fair competition among political parties and to improve the nation’s democratic system, the committee said.
The probe found that the KMT had owned 100 percent of Central Investment since its founding in 1971 and had spun off Hsinyutai Co in 2010 with the intent of separating disputed party properties from those that could be privatized, although KMT officials continued to own and manage both companies.
“In an era when there was no distinction between the party and the state, half of the KMT’s revenue came from state subsidies, while its affiliated organizations provided about 20 percent, and it had some other sources of income,” Koo said at the time.
To block the committee’s injunction, KMT officials filed the litigation at the Taipei High Administrative Court.
The party also filed for a constitutional interpretation on the case. In August last year, the Council of Grand Justices issued Interpretation No. 793, which ruled in favor of the committee and allowed the case to proceed.
In May 2019, the committee issued an injunction that the KMT needed to transfer the value of the Daxiao Building, which is on Aikuo E Road, to the government.
An investigation found that the property had been public housing before the KMT took it over in 1985, and that the building was sold to the KMT-owned Kuanghua Investment Co (光華投資) for NT$1.3 billion in 2002, before being sold to Yuanta Group (元大集團) in 2010.
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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