Refusing to be passive in the snowballing insider-trading scandal in which one of its senior officials has become embroiled, the Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday announced that it will form a task force investigating illegal trading of Power Quotient International Co (勁永國際) shares.
"As rumors abound, we decided to take an initiative to probe the case and protect our reputation," commission chairman Kong Jaw-sheng (
Power Quotient, which makes and markets computer-memory modules, flash-memory storage devices and peripherals, was found to have inflated revenue figures for last year. The Taipei Prosecutors' Office and the Black Gold Investigation Center suspect that somebody was making illegal profits by manipulating stocks.
In a bid to unravel this complex financial web of intrigue, the commission's task force will investigate employees of the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp, the Securities and Futures Bureau, the Financial Examination Bureau, prosecutors and investigators, as well as their close relatives, to find out whether they were trading Power Quotient's shares after the government started probing the case last December, said Lu Daung-yen (呂東英), the commission's vice chairman.
Lu will serve as the convener of the task force.
"We'll examine whether any government officials are guilty of malpractice in this case," he said.
As Lee Chin-chen (
"Lee doesn't have to be temporarily suspended from his position, as prosecutors have required, unless he is indicted," Lu said.
He said that the commission is entitled to carry out quasi-judiciary investigations and can examine abnormal share transactions, capital flows and search for evidence of criminal activities.
"This will be a race between the commission and prosecutors to hunt down illegal investors," he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained