The Taipei High Administrative Court yesterday ruled in favor of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), saying it need not pay the state the more than NT$1 billion (US$31.43 million at the current exchange rate) it made from the sale of its old party headquarters in downtown Taipei.
Yesterday’s ruling was a reversal of a decision by the same court in 2021, which stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the KMT in 2018 against the government’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee.
The ruling can still be appealed.
Photo: Taipei Times file
The court said the committee must withdraw its 2018 administrative order demanding that the KMT hand over the NT$1.14 billion it made from the property sale.
The KMT in March 2006 sold the site to Chang Yung-fa Foundation for NT$2.3 billion.
Set up in 2016, the committee evaluated historical records to verify that the KMT had rented the property to house its old party headquarters.
The building housed the International Red Cross during the Japanese colonial era.
Records show that after World War II, the then-KMT government placed the building under the Ministry of Finance’s National Property Administration and started renting it for its party headquarters in 1967.
When the lease expired in 1971, it did not renew the contract, but continued using the office building until it signed a new lease in 1983.
The KMT later applied and in 1990 received approval to purchase the property, for which it paid NT$77.12 million.
The KMT rebuilt the headquarters building in 1994 in preparation to sell, mainly due to pressure from former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who served as a legislator from 1990 to 1994, and as Taipei mayor from 1994 to 1998.
During his election campaigns in the early 1990s, Chen hammered the KMT with accusations of “illegally occupying” the property and promised voters that if elected, he would use the authority of the government to tear it down and force the KMT off the property.
The KMT lost in the court’s first ruling in May 2021, with the Taipei High Administrative Court deeming the property an “ill-gotten party asset” and that the party obtained ownership through illegal means.
In a separate ruling yesterday, the Taipei High Administrative Court ruled in favor of Broadcasting Corp of China (BCC), saying that the committee’s declaration of the company as a KMT affiliate was incorrect.
The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the BCC after the committee in 2019 deemed it an affiliate of the KMT and ordered it to relinquish 109,627m2 of land to the state and pay NT$7.731 billion.
Yesterday’s ruling can still be appealed.
The committee said it would appeal both rulings.
Taiwanese scientists have engineered plants that can capture about 50 percent more carbon dioxide and produce more than twice as many seeds as unmodified plants, a breakthrough they hope could one day help mitigate global warming and grow more food staples such as rice. If applied to major food crops, the new system could cut carbon emissions and raise yields “without additional equipment or labor costs,” Academia Sinica researcher and lead author the study Lu Kuan-jen (呂冠箴) said. Academia Sinica president James Liao (廖俊智) said that as humans emit 9.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide compared with the 220 billion tonnes absorbed
The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Wanda-Zhonghe Line is 81.7 percent complete, with public opening targeted for the end of 2027, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said today. Surrounding roads are to be open to the public by the end of next year, Hou said during an inspection of construction progress. The 9.5km line, featuring nine underground stations and one depot, is expected to connect Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station to Chukuang Station in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和). All 18 tunnels for the line are complete, while the main structures of the stations and depot are mostly finished, he
Taipei is to implement widespread road closures around Taipei 101 on Friday to make way for large crowds during the Double Ten National Day celebration, the Taipei Department of Transportation said. A four-minute fireworks display is to be launched from the skyscraper, along with a performance by 500 drones flying in formation above the nearby Nanshan A21 site, starting at 10pm. Vehicle restrictions would occur in phases, they said. From 5pm to 9pm, inner lanes of Songshou Road between Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101 are to be closed, with only the outer lanes remaining open. Between 9pm and 9:40pm, the section is
China’s plan to deploy a new hypersonic ballistic missile at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) base near Taiwan likely targets US airbases and ships in the western Pacific, but it would also present new threats to Taiwan, defense experts said. The New York Times — citing a US Department of Defense report from last year on China’s military power — on Monday reported in an article titled “The missiles threatening Taiwan” that China has stockpiled 3,500 missiles, 1.5 times more than four years earlier. Although it is unclear how many of those missiles were targeting Taiwan, the newspaper reported
RSS