BenQ chairman, four others indicted

BenQ Corp (明基) chairman Lee Kun-yao (李焜耀) and four other company executives have been charged with insider trading, prosecutors said yesterday.

Lee, company president Sheaffer Lee (李錫華) and chief financial officer Eric Yu (游克用) were also charged with money laundering, the Taoyuan District Prosecutors' Office said in a faxed statement.

Taoyuan-based BenQ is the nation's largest maker of branded consumer electronics.

Prosecutors on March 13 raided BenQ's offices in Taoyuan and Taipei on suspicion that employees sold BenQ shares from January to March last year, just before the company announced its first-ever quarterly loss last year, the prosecutor's office said at the time.

"They questioned me for two hours" on April 11, Lee Kun-yao said yesterday in an interview before he was charged. "They didn't ask me anything related to insider trading."

The company, which on March 15 had denied it was involved in insider trading, said last night that it was "shocked" and surprised at the charges.

Alex Liu (劉維宇), a former chief financial officer who's now an associate vice president in the finance department, and Billy Liu (劉大文), an accounting manager, were also charged with insider trading, the statement said.

Prosecutors have detained Yu since March 13 as part of the investigation.