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.
‘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
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
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
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
RSS