Word: kmt
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...political party once held to be the world's richest was never shy about using its money to buy support. At the peak of its power in the 1990s, Taiwan's Kuomintang (KMT) rewarded its members with stock options, lavished expensive gifts on journalists and opinion makers, and lured tens of thousands to political rallies and election booths with the promise of free food, hats, flags, jackets, and zou-lu-kun?red envelopes stuffed with petty cash. The party even dipped into its own coffers to bolster flagging stock markets or to buy diplomatic support from impoverished nations...
...image of an impossibly wealthy and influential organization was one the KMT tried to foster even through its Central Headquarters building. Opened in 1998 on a prime piece of downtown Taipei real estate, the $144 million, 12-story edifice glistens with floors and walls tiled in marble imported from Spain and India. In one of the most cramped and densely populated cities in Asia, the headquarters presides over a wide, leafy boulevard, overshadowing the brick Taiwan presidential offices situated across the street?a building that was once virtually an annex of the party anyway, since a Kuomintang chairman occupied...
...Unfortunately for Chang and the KMT, the pillar may rest upon stolen property?and the rightful owners want it back. The KMT's wealth stems from what has become an embarrassment of assets accumulated during the party's 51 years as the island's rulers. While other political groups in Taiwan are, as in most democracies, funded largely through contributions squeezed from citizens and corporations, the KMT controls a small empire of real estate (including the land on which party headquarters sits), companies, investments and other assets estimated a few years ago to be worth more than $17 billion...
...Critics say much of the KMT's holdings, spoils from a time when Taiwan was an autocracy run solely by KMT bosses, give the party an unfair edge in the game of politics. "The [KMT] has become a very wealthy monster," says Huang Huang-hsiung, who has spent the past 10 years tracking party assets as an investigator for a government oversight agency. "It became impossible for anyone else to compete. Now we have the chance to remove the final barrier to Taiwan's transition to a full-fledged democracy...
...surprisingly, the man trying to knock down the barrier is Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian, whose Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) broke the KMT's longstanding stranglehold on power in March 2000 elections. Chen last month made good on an election promise when his cabinet introduced legislation barring political parties from investing in profit-making enterprises. The bills, if passed by Taiwan's parliament, would also give the government the go-ahead to open the KMT's books and seize assets deemed to have been obtained illegally...