Court rules women's league has KMT link in 1st trial after over 6 years

Taipei, Nov. 18 (CNA) The Taipei High Administrative Court ruled on Monday that the National Women's League was an affiliate of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) before 2004, and ordered it to pay NT$17.89 billion (US$549.87 million) to the state, in a case the group brought up in 2018 against a government agency.

The women's group sued the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee for the government agency's decision to classify it as a KMT affiliate in February 2018, arguing it had not been controlled or run by the political party, the court said in a statement.

The committee also froze the assets of the women's group founded by the late Madame Chiang Kai-shek (蔣宋美齡) in 1950, including NT$38.5 billion in cash.

It took six years and eight months for the court to rule on the 2018 case because the trial was suspended over questions surrounding the Statute for the Handling of Ill-gotten Assets by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations passed in 2016, according to the statement.

The Taipei court sought the Constitutional Court's review of the statute and resumed trial in 2020 after the Justices decided that the law passed by the Legislature after the Democratic Progressive Party came into power was constitutional.

The trail was also stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic, the court said.

Both parties in the case did not dispute that the women's group was not a KMT affiliate at the time of the trial. However, the committee argued the group had been under the KMT's control and should have paid what it determined as "ill-gotten assets" to the state to demonstrate the end of its affiliation.

In its ruling, the court determined that the women's group was affiliated with the KMT between 1959 and 2004, because of the "ill-gotten assets" in the form of donations the group received from 1963-2004.

Once the women's group pays the donations with interest to the state, the end of its affiliation with the KMT would be officially established, the statement said.

The case can be appealed and both the women's group and the committee have said they plan to do so.