A top executive of Ting Hsin Oil and Fat Industrial Co (頂新製油實業) and two from Cheng I Food Co (正義股份) were detained yesterday in connection with the ongoing cooking oil scandals.
Ting Hsin Oil & Fat acting chairman and former general manager Chen Mao-chia (陳茂嘉) was detained after more than 10 hours of questioning by prosecutors in Changhua County overnight, following a search of the company headquarters.
In Greater Kaohsiung, Cheng I president Ho Yu-jen (何育仁) and deputy chief procurement officer Hu Chin-min (胡金忞) were also detained.
Photo: Yen Hung-chun, Taipei Times
The two companies, both units of food conglomerate Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團), are accused of using lard meant for animal feed in their cooking oil products.
The incident — the third oil-related scandal to hit the conglomerate within a year — has sparked widespread outrage among consumers in Taiwan, leading to a campaign to boycott the group’s products and brands.
Former Cheng I and Ting Hsin Oil & Fat chairman Wei Ying-chun (魏應充) held a news conference on Saturday to apologize to the public.
He also announced that the two subsidiaries would suspend their operations until their procedures were improved.
He is now under investigation by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office.
The Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said a meeting is to be held today among prosecutors from 13 local prosecutors’ offices who currently have food-related cases on hand.
The meeting aims to integrate information and communications among the local prosecutors in a bid to enhance the efficiency of the investigations.
The Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said a total of 48 food-related cases have been undertaken by prosecutors in Keelung, Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Greater Taichung, Chuanghua County, Yunlin County, Chiayi, Greater Tainan, Greater Kaohsiung, Pingtung County, Yilan County and Penghu.
Althought the 48 cases may not all be of major food security concerns, particiants at the meeting today are to nonetheless discuss the cases and decide whether any warrant an expansion in terms of its probes, the office said.
Meanwhile, according to the Pingtung District Prosecutors’ Office, Ting Hsin Oil & Fat Industrial had been indicted well before the latest revelations surfaced.
The indictment against Ting Hsin Oil & Fat Industrial and three of its executives was handed down on Aug. 21 and covered charges of fraud, faking product labels and violating food safety regulations, charges dating back to an oil scandal that emerged late last year, the office said.
Prosecutors said Ting Hsin Oil & Fat purchased low-cost oils from Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory Co (大統長基) that contained artificial coloring and cottonseed oil, but were marketed as more expensive products.
It then processed those oils and also sold them as high-priced pure olive oil or grapeseed oil, making illicit gains, prosecutors said.
Chang Chi Foodstuff’s scheme to pawn cheaper oils off as more expensive ones was not publicly exposed until October last year, when the Ting Hsin Group’s flagship Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品工業) brand was also found to have sold the adulterated oil products for several years.
After an investigation, prosecutors determined that Ting Hsin Oil & Fat was selling its adulterated oils to Wei Chuan on a contract basis.
In the indictment, prosecutors alleged that the three of its executives knew the oils the company bought from Chang Chi were adulterated, yet continued to purchase and ship them to the Pingtung factory to be processed and packaged for Wei Chuan.
Prosecutors recommended that the company be fined NT$51.08 million (US$1.68 million) and have also asked the court to give them the maximum possible sentences because they “showed no remorse for the offenses.”
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
MARITIME SECURITY: Of the 52 vessels, 15 were rated a ‘threat’ for various reasons, including the amount of time they spent loitering near subsea cables, the CGA said Taiwan has identified 52 “suspicious” Chinese-owned ships flying flags of convenience that require close monitoring if detected near the nation, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday, as the nation seeks to protect its subsea telecoms cables. The stricter regime comes after a Cameroon-flagged vessel was briefly detained by the CGA earlier this month on suspicion of damaging an international cable northeast of Taiwan. The vessel is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company with a Chinese address given for its only listed director, the CGA said previously. Taiwan fears China could sever its communication links as part of an attempt
RSS