SETTING PRECEDENT:Treatment of the case, in which the KMT allegedly sold land at less than market value, could provide pointers to how it will deal with claims rejected in court

Taipei Times
Date: Aug 26, 2017
By: Tseng Wei-chen / Staff reporter

Yuanlih Construction Enterprise Group (元利建設) is suspected of having illegally profited from its 2005 purchase of land in Taipei’s Muzha District (木柵) from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the Executive Yuan’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee said yesterday as it continues its investigation into the KMT’s original acquisition of the land.

Yeh Sung-jen (葉頌仁), whose father owned four plots of land on which the KMT built its Institute on Policy Research and Development, appealed to the committee for a ruling after he failed to convince a court that KMT authorities forced his father to sell the land in 1962.

The case is viewed as an important indicator of how the committee will handle illicit asset cases that have been rejected in court.

A committee report yesterday found that the KMT’s 2005 sale of the institute’s compound to Yuanlih for NT$4.25 billion (US$140 million) represented a loss of more than NT2 billion below its market value.    [FULL  STORY]