Pingtung County Deputy Commissioner Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱) yesterday accused the Ministry of Health and Welfare of setting up the county government in an alleged leak of classified documents to Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團), saying that the ministry had not marked the documents as “classified.”
“The e-mails that the health ministry sent to local governments were only partially classified. The documents sent to Changhua County Government were designated as classified, while the ones sent to the Pingtung County Government were not,” Chung told a press conference in Taipei yesterday.
“If the documents are not classified, then of course, we cannot be complicit in ‘leaking classified documents,’” he said.
Chung added that he feels the Pingtung County Government has been “set up.”
The Pingtung County Government is governed by the Democratic Progressive Party, while the Changhua County Government is ruled by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The documents in question were delivered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of Health and Welfare on Oct. 8, informing the latter that the oil products Ting Hsin had bought from Vietnam-based manufacturer Dai Hanh Phuc Co (大幸福公司) were suspected to be substandard and urging Changhua’s and Pingtung’s health bureaus to launch investigations.
However, on Thursday, when prosecutors searched the office of Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品), a subsidiary of Ting Hsin International Group that allegedly blended the substandard oils imported from Vietnam into cooking oils it produced and marketed in Taiwan, they discovered the documents in one of the company’s computers.
The health ministry and the KMT on Friday accused the Pingtung County Government of leaking classified information.
Separately on Friday, Tsai Ching-jung (蔡青蓉), a technical specialist with the Pingtung County Government, told a press conference in Pingtung that after she received the directive from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, she contacted the head of Ting Hsin Oil and Fat Industrial Co’s (頂新製油) Pingtung plant so that the plant could prepare the necessary information required by the ministry for the inspection.
Tsai said that when she faxed him information on what was required, she mistakenly included the document in question.
The beleaguered civil servant, who was listed on Friday as a defendant in the information leak case, urged prosecutors to check the telephone conversations she had had to prove that she had not been feeding Ting Hsin confidential information.
She also defended herself by saying that the document was marked “highly” important, but not “confidential.”
Commenting on the matter yesterday, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) said it was certainly a “big mistake” for the public servant to commit such an error. He also criticized the Ministry of Health and Welfare for not clearly designating the documents prior to sending them to the county government.
Additional reporting by CNA
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
RSS