Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wellington Koo (顧立雄) yesterday confirmed that he has agreed to head the Executive Yuan’s commission to handle the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) ill-gotten assets.
The commission is to be set up under 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 was passed by the legislature late last month in a vote that was split along party lines.
According to the act, the premier is to appoint 11 to 13 members of the commission, who will be charged with investigating, retroactively confiscating and returning or restoring to rightful owners all assets that were improperly obtained by the KMT and affiliated organizations since Aug. 15, 1945 — when Japan officially announced its surrender to the Allies, bringing World War II to an end.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Koo said he had not anticipated the appointment and had planned to push for several judicial, narcotics and prison reform bills in the legislature, but President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Premier Lin Chuan (林全) had expressed their wishes for him to accept it.
“I can only tell you at this time that they said I was the right man for the job. When called on to shoulder such great responsibilities, there is no room for me to say no,” he said.
A commission to deal with illegitimately obtained party properties is “crucial to transitional justice, fair play between the political parties and deepening the nation’s democratization,” he added.
Koo said that as a lawmaker, he had worked hard to help draft the ill-gotten party properties law, and the legislation and the commission tasked with implementing the law were “unprecedented challenges for which it is impossible to ask others for guidance.”
The KMT should “let go of the party assets that are a hindrance to its rebirth,” Koo said, promising to carry out his new job “correctly and within the confines of the law.”
Koo was formerly a partner at Formosa Transnational Attorneys at Law and has served as director of the Taipei Bar Association, chairman of the Judicial Reform Foundation and chairman of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights.
Sources said that the Presidential Office and the Cabinet believe that Koo’s “mastery of the law, personal integrity and work ethic” would be important qualities for overseeing the effort to recover the private and public assets that the KMT is accused of having obtained during its years of authoritarian rule in Taiwan.
Koo will have to give up his legislator-at-large seat, as the Constitution bars serving lawmakers from concurrently holding a government post.
He will be replaced by former DPP legislator Julian Kuo (郭正亮), whose name was on the DPP legislator-at-large ballot in the Jan. 16 elections immediately after Koo’s.
However, Kuo’s return to the legislature could renew questions about his arrest in February on a drunk driving charge.
Additional reporting by Yang Chun-hui and CNA
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and