- By Cheng Yu-fu and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
The Supreme Administrative Court has ruled that the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee correctly designated the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Taichung chapter headquarters as illegally obtained property.
The KMT had illegally used the Japanese colonial-era Taichung City Government Building as its Taichung chapter headquarters and community service center for 36 years, the committee said.
When the city government asked the party to relinquish the building, the KMT in 1985 made the city pay NT$35 million (US$1.07 million at the current exchange rate) as relocation compensation, it said.
The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Taichung chapter is pictured in an undated photograph.Photo: Taipei Times file
The KMT then used the money to buy public land for its new headquarters at a discount, the committee said, adding that the move constituted illegal appropriation of public property, enabled by the authoritarian power the KMT wielded during the martial law period.
The committee in 2023 deemed that the headquarters was improperly obtained and be returned to the city.
In response, the KMT the same year launched an administrative lawsuit against the committee.
The Taipei High Administrative Court in June last year ruled against the KMT, a decision that the party appealed.
The Supreme Administrative Court upheld the lower court’s decision, putting an end to years of legal battle over the property.
The committee said the ruling showed that facts cannot be silenced and that properties illegally seized by the KMT should and could be returned to the public’s hands.
The investigation into and expropriation of assets the KMT had acquired via extralegal means is a work in progress, it said, adding that the nation’s transitional justice remains incomplete.
KMT Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) is urged to use the recovered building in ways that benefit the public, the committee said.