Plans are expected to materialize shortly, if former President Lee Teng-hui agrees to let them claim the deposit Soong made as subsidies to the bereaved family of Chiang Ching-kuo, top aides to Wu said yesterday.

President Chiang Ching-kuo died on January 13, 1988. Lee took over as accidental president.

The Kuomintang, of which Lee was chairman then, continued to support the Chiang family. Soong, as secretary-general of the party, was responsible for seeing to it that the bereaved family were taken good care of.

Lee and Soong fell off in 1999.

Soong bolted the Kuomintang to run for president as an independent. Lee supported his anointed heir Lien Chan for president.

To help Lien win the presidential election of 2000, Lee charged Soong with pocketing NT$240 million out of the subsidies the Kuomintang paid to the Chiang family.

The money was kept in the Chung Hsing Bills Finance Corporation under the name of Soong's son, the Kuomintang charged.

That is the Chung Hsing Bills scandal which doomed Soong's chances to get elected president eight years ago. Chen Shui-bian edged him out with a margin of 300,000 votes.

"In the run-up to the election," one aide to Wu said, "Soong went to the Taipei district court to make that deposit, designating Lee Teng-hui, the chairman of the Kuomintang, as the recipient."

But Lee refused to accept the money. Soong deposited it to prove he had no intention of lining his own pocket, but the Kuomintang sued him for embezzlement.

After the election, Lien settled the case out of court. The litigation against Soong was dropped but the deposit has remained under the court custody.

"If it weren't taken back, it would go to the national treasury ten years after it was deposited," Wu's aide said. The money has to be claimed before the end of next year.

He said Lee tried to claim it in 2004. "He couldn't get it because he was no longer the Kuomintang chairman," Wu's assistant pointed out.

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