Taiwan to probe seized assets of parties

TAIPEI — Taiwan is to launch an official investigation into the ill-gotten assets of political parties in a move blasted by the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) as persecution.

The move comes after a Bill passed by Parliament late on Monday authorises the investigation and seizure of allegedly illicit assets from all parties, but to date only the KMT has faced questions about its trove.

Legislators spent more than 12 hours debating the Bill and voting on it clause by clause before it was finally approved.

“The Democratic Progressive Party thanks the Taiwanese people for giving us the legislative majority to materialise our promise,” DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming said after the decision.

“It is the victory of the Taiwanese people,’’ Mr Ker said.

Beijing-sceptic President Tsai Ing-wen, who took power in May marking the end of an eight-year rapprochement with China under the previous KMT government, has repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of the KMT’s assets in her presidential campaign.

She has accused it of trying to dispose of them before presidential and parliamentary elections in January.

Since then, relations with China have become increasingly frosty and the new investigation is likely to deepen divisions between Taiwan’s main parties.

Considered one of the richest parties in the world, KMT registered total assets of NT$18.96 billion (S$802 million) the end of last year, compared with NT$478.72 million by Ms Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

The KMT, which fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to the Chinese communists on the mainland, traces its wealth to its origins in pre-communist China.

It also inherited assets nationalised by the Japanese, who ruled Taiwan as a colony from 1895-1945.

However, critics have long accused the party of stealing from the people of Taiwan and illegally amassing fortunes through cosy business links during its half-century grip on power.

Ms Tsai described the passing of the Bill as a “milestone for mature development in Taiwan’s democratic politics”.

KMT chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu said the passage of the legislation marked the beginning of the downfall of Taiwan’s democratic politics.

She also lashed out at the DPP for using “majority violence to pass an illegal, unconstitutional and undemocratic vicious law” for its own partisan interests.

The party has repeatedly blocked the assets Bill, which was first proposed 14 years ago when it held a parliamentary majority.

Now it faces a detailed probe after losing the presidency and control of Parliament for the first time ever in January, as the public became increasingly uneasy over closer ties with China.

KMT vice-chairman Steve Chan said yesterday that his party would exhaust all legal means to safeguard its constitutional rights, including seeking constitutional interpretation from the Council of Grand Justices.

Under the Bill, all assets of a political party, with the exception of membership fees, political donations and government subsidies, obtained since Aug 15, 1945 — when the KMT took over Taiwan from Japan — are considered ill-gotten and must be returned to the government.

Political parties must declare assets to a new commission within a year of the Bill’s enactment, and violators will be fined up to NT$5 million.

After it fled to Taiwan in 1949, the KMT ruled under martial law until 1987, then continued to lead the government until 2000 when it lost power for the first time to the DPP.

The party was in power again from 2008-2016 when Beijing-friendly leader Ma Ying-jeou oversaw an unprecedented thaw in ties with China. AGENCIES