The Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee has asked the Taipei City Government not to issue a construction permit for a planned residential high-rise in the city’s Muzha District (木柵) on grounds that the land on which it is to be built could have been illegally appropriated by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The Yuanlih Group (元利機構) is seeking to construct a 38-story building on a 17,925 ping (59,256m2) plot near the former site of the KMT’s National Research Institute, which the developer bought from the party in August 2005, sources said.
The city government late last month called a hearing to determine whether the construction should be permitted.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
During the hearing, an unidentified committee representative lodged the committee’s objection to the construction, saying that it could result in legal complications should the committee declare the property to be an illegal KMT asset and move to repossess it, sources said.
An ongoing investigation by the committee found that the KMT bought many plots around the institute after its establishment as the Research Institute of Revolution and Practice in 1953.
The plots were then illegally reclassified as “land under utilization by government agencies,” which allowed the KMT to avoid paying property taxes on them, sources paraphrased the representative as saying.
The legal status of the plot is further complicated by Yeh Sung-jen (葉頌仁), son of the original landowner, Yeh Chung-chuan (葉中川), saying that his father was forced to sign away the property by armed state security agents, the representative was quoted as saying.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office is probing former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who as the KMT chairman in 2005 was implicated in illegally profiting the developer by selling the plot at below market value.
The KMT sold the plot for NT$4.25 billion (US$142.54 million at the current exchange rate) and paid half of the land value increment tax, which reduced the actual cost to the developer to NT$3.83 billion, sources quoted the representative as saying.
Committee spokeswoman Shih Chin-fang (施錦芳) confirmed that the committee has recommended against allowing the construction.
Allowing the project would jeopardize the committee’s ability to return the land to the Yeh family should it determine that the KMT had acquired it illegally, Shih said.
Only half of the parcels in the project have been appropriately zoned for urban development, she added.
The city government has not made a final decision and it has told the committee that the concerns would be addressed at the next session of the land-use evaluation committee, Shih said.
The committee would also continue to investigate the group’s acquisition of Zhongxing Shanzhuang (中興山莊) plots near the institute, she added.
The Yuanlih Group said the Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行) sold a plot at a price similar to what the group paid the KMT.
By making these demands, the committee might have exceeded its authority or allowed its operations to be influenced by politics, the group added.
GEARING UP: An invasion would be difficult and would strain China’s forces, but it has conducted large-scale training supporting an invasion scenario, the report said China increased its military pressure on Taiwan last year and took other steps in preparation for a potential invasion, an annual report published by the US Department of Defense on Wednesday showed. “Throughout 2023, Beijing continued to erode longstanding norms in and around Taiwan by employing a range of pressure tactics against Taiwan,” the report said, which is titled “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (PRC) 2024.” The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “is preparing for a contingency to unify Taiwan with the PRC by force, if perceived as necessary by Beijing, while simultaneously deterring, delaying or denying
‘LAGGING BEHIND’: The NATO secretary-general called on democratic allies to be ‘clear-eyed’ about Beijing’s military buildup, urging them to boost military spending NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte mentioning China’s bullying of Taiwan and its ambition to reshape the global order has significance during a time when authoritarian states are continuously increasing their aggression, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. In a speech at the Carnegie Europe think tank in Brussels on Thursday, Rutte said Beijing is bullying Taiwan and would start to “nibble” at Taiwan if Russia benefits from a post-invasion peace deal with Ukraine. He called on democratic allies to boost defense investments and also urged NATO members to increase defense spending in the face of growing military threats from Russia
PEACEFUL RESOLUTION: A statement issued following a meeting between Australia and Britain reiterated support for Taiwan and opposition to change in the Taiwan Strait Canada should support the peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s destiny according to the will of Taiwanese, Canadian lawmakers said in a resolution marking the second anniversary of that nation’s Indo-Pacific strategy on Monday. The Canadian House of Commons committee on Canada-Chinese relations made the comment as part of 34 recommendations for the new edition of the strategy, adding that Ottawa should back Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, first published in October 2022, emphasized that the region’s security, trade, human rights, democracy and environmental protection would play a crucial role in shaping Canada’s future. The strategy called for Canada to deepen
TECH CONFERENCE: Input from industry and academic experts can contribute to future policymaking across government agencies, President William Lai said Multifunctional service robots could be the next new area in which Taiwan could play a significant role, given its strengths in chip manufacturing and software design, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman and chief executive C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday. “In the past two months, our customers shared a lot of their future plans with me. Artificial intelligence [AI] and AI applications were the most talked about subjects in our conversation,” Wei said in a speech at the National Science and Technology Conference in Taipei. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, counts Nvidia Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Apple Inc and
RSS