Vietnam-based Dai Hanh Phuc Co exported 43,000 tonnes of animal feed-grade oil to Taiwan over the past three years, the trading company’s manager said on Saturday, opening up the possibility that more domestic firms are involved in the latest cooking oil scare than previously thought.
The manager runs Dai Hanh Phuc with her Taiwanese partner, Yang Chen-yi (楊振益), who was detained by local authorities for allegedly supplying Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) with the animal feed-grade oil the Taiwanese conglomerate used to produce oil products sold for human use.
The manager said the Vietnamese firm shipped 6 million kilograms of edible cooking oil and 43 million kilograms of animal feed-grade oil to Taiwan from July 2011 to July of this year.
She also told Taiwanese officials that Dai Hanh Phuc has not been involved in the distribution of cooking oil since July.
Although no mutual judicial assistance accord exists between Taipei and Hanoi, Taiwanese diplomats said their talks with the Vietnam-based company could help serve as “testimony” for Taiwanese authorities investigating the case.
However, Dai Hanh Phuc’s motivation for issuing a statement that it is no longer distributing cooking oil is suspicious and needs to be investigated, local officials said.
If Dai Hanh Phuc exported the animal feed-grade oil to Taiwan as fit for human consumption, it would have had to forge documents to comply with Vietnamese law, local officials said.
If Dai Hanh Phuc’s claim that it supplied such a massive amount of animal feed-grade oil to Taiwanese companies to produce cooking oil is true — as Ting Hsin was found to have done — more businesses could be implicated in the tainted oil scandal than have been identified.
The manager was called in by Taiwan’s representative office in Vietnam to clarify the details surrounding the cooking oil scare that erupted earlier this month — the third of its kind in a year — all of which have involved Ting Hsin.
Ting Hsin, one of the nation’s largest food companies, is at the heart of the scandal, after it was been found to have used recycled waste oil and oil intended for animal use from Dai Hanh Phuc in its cooking oil products.
Ting Hsin senior executive Wei Ying-chun (魏應充), who resigned as chairman of Ting Hsin subsidiary Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品工業) in the wake of the latest scandal, has been taken into custody for his suspected role in the incident.
Yang and four executives at Ting Hsin and its subsidiaries have also been remanded into custody.
ENDEAVOR MANTA: The ship is programmed to automatically return to its designated home port and would self-destruct if seized by another party The Endeavor Manta, Taiwan’s first military-specification uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) tailor-made to operate in the Taiwan Strait in a bid to bolster the nation’s asymmetric combat capabilities made its first appearance at Kaohsiung’s Singda Harbor yesterday. Taking inspiration from Ukraine’s navy, which is using USVs to force Russia’s Black Sea fleet to take shelter within its own ports, CSBC Taiwan (台灣國際造船) established a research and development unit on USVs last year, CSBC chairman Huang Cheng-hung (黃正弘) said. With the exception of the satellite guidance system and the outboard motors — which were purchased from foreign companies that were not affiliated with Chinese-funded
PERMIT REVOKED: The influencer at a news conference said the National Immigration Agency was infringing on human rights and persecuting Chinese spouses Chinese influencer “Yaya in Taiwan” (亞亞在台灣) yesterday evening voluntarily left Taiwan, despite saying yesterday morning that she had “no intention” of leaving after her residence permit was revoked over her comments on Taiwan being “unified” with China by military force. The Ministry of the Interior yesterday had said that it could forcibly deport the influencer at midnight, but was considering taking a more flexible approach and beginning procedures this morning. The influencer, whose given name is Liu Zhenya (劉振亞), departed on a 8:45pm flight from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) to Fuzhou, China. Liu held a news conference at the airport at 7pm,
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
RSS