From AP via The Wall Street Journal:
Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, once considered one of the world’s wealthiest political groups, said it lost 42.7 billion New Taiwan dollars (US$1.3 billion) on investments over the past decade.
The party’s losses began in 1996 on a wide range of investments in Taiwan and overseas, party official Chang Che-shen told the Nationalist leadership’s weekly meeting.
The Nationalists ruled Taiwan for half a century until they lost power to the Democratic Progressive Party’s Chen Shui-bian in the 2000 presidential elections.
The DPP says the Nationalists illegally acquired a significant portion of their assets from the state, either free or at extremely low cost, and should return those assets. DPP leaders said yesterday they had collected more than 102,000 signatures in a campaign that could eventually lead to a referendum on the fate of the Nationalists’ assets.[Full Text and Subscribers Only]
