Prosecutors have indicted 46 people for forging Kaohsiung Harbor's container volume so that they could be rewarded for raising the port’s world ranking, a local newspaper reported yesterday.
The Kaohsiung Prosecutors' Office announced the indictment on Wednesday following a year-long investigation into the alleged fraud involving the Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau’s top three officials and a number of shipping firm executives, the Chinese-language United Daily News reported.
Among those indicted are 21 government officials, including bureau director Hsieh Ming-hui (謝明輝), vice director Huang Kuo-ying (黃國英), harbor master Tsai Ting-yi (蔡丁義) and a dozen mid- and lower-level harbor officials.
The other 25 are employees of shipping firms.
The shipping firms are Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp, APL Ltd, Evergreen Marine, Wan Hai Lines Ltd and NYK Logistics.
Hsieh denied any wrongdoing, saying he had followed the rules and if there was any discrepancy in the figures, that would be the shipping companies’ responsibility, the report said.
The report said the suspected forgery began in 2006, when Kaohsiung Harbor enacted a three-year plan to boost the port's global ranking in handling containers.
The plan offered cash rewards to Kaohsiung Harbor officials if container volume rose. It also offered incentives and discounts to shipping lines if they sent more containers to Kaohsiung.
Harbor officials are suspected of collaborating with shipping firms to fake container volume and split the rewards. As a result, the container volume at Kaohsiung Harbor surpassed 10 million 20-foot equivalent units in 2007, prosecutors said.
Hsieh and the others are suspected of pocketing NT$300 million (US$10 million). Prosecutors launched the probe last year after being tipped off about the fraud.
Kaohsiung Harbor was the world's No. 3 container port during the 1980s, but its ranking has slipped rapidly in recent years as other countries, especially China, have expanded their ports or built new ones.
Last year, Kaohsiung fell out of the world's top 10 container ports, dropping to 12th from seventh in 2007.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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