Taipei Times
Date: Mar 24, 2016
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday downplayed a local media report alleging that a KMT heavyweight was seeking to sell off party properties and the state-owned Grand Hotel to a US casino tycoon.

“The Grand Hotel belongs to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. The party has no association with the hotel — let alone trying to sell it,” KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director-general Lee Ming-hsien (李明賢) said yesterday.

The content of the report is clearly unsubstantiated, Lee said, without elaborating.

Lee was responding to a report published yesterday in the latest issue of Chinese-language Next Magazine, which said that a high-ranking KMT official approached a Las Vegas casino magnate visiting Taiwan, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Taipei on Mar. 9, to sound him out about purchasing three KMT properties and the Grand Hotel.

The Grand Hotel is affiliated with the “Taiwan Dunmu Association,” a private organization established in 1961 by KMT heavyweights that is overseen by the transport ministry.     [FULL  STORY]