The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) squatted on a piece of public property in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山), before acquiring and later selling it for profit, the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee said yesterday.
Citing its investigation, the committee said the property at 6 Quanzhou St, which now houses a 12-story condominium, was seized in 1945 by the Republic of China government from Heihachiro Ishikuro, a Japanese citizen.
The KMT Department of Nautical Enterprises and Sailors began occupying the property illegally in 1950, and in 1957, the party reached an agreement to start paying rent to state-owned Land Bank of Taiwan, which managed properties and enterprises seized from Japan, although it only paid the rent for the first three months of 1957, the committee said.
Photo courtesy of the Ill-Gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee
The bank told the KMT that it would “reluctantly allow” the KMT to pay the debt of NT$49,390 (US$1,572 at the current exchange rate) in installments as condition for continuing the lease, the committee said.
The KMT refused to pay the installments, saying that there were cash flow problems with department and it could not guarantee that the department would meet its obligations, the committee said.
After the bank threatened to sue to evict the KMT and foreclose on the property, the KMT finally agreed to make provide a guarantee via its then-Finance Committee chairman Hsu Po-yuan (徐伯園), paying the rent arrears in installments of NT$3,000 over 17 months in 1961 and 1962, the committee said.
The KMT in 1971 bought the land and the structure for NT$2.58 million, and in a series of transactions between 1999 and 2002, sold them to a third party for an undisclosed sum, it said.
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