Singapore firm Darco Water Technologies Ltd (達闊水技術), a water treatment solutions provider, yesterday issued a statement saying it has launched litigation against three of its Taiwanese executives on suspicion of fraud.
Darco said it suspected the former general, administration and accounting managers of its Taiwan subsidiary, Darco Engineering Taiwan (DET, 達闊環境工程), had committed considerable financial account manipulation, defrauding the company of an estimated NT$186.2 million (US$6.2 million).
The findings came as a result of an investigation by DET into its accounting records after Darco earlier this year suspected a possible misappropriation of funds following several extraordinary and large cash advances, unsubstantiated project costs and unusual cost overruns and losses at DET.
Thye Kim Meng (戴錦明), executive chairman and chief executive of Darco, said that the suspects were senior managers who were entrusted with company funds, with each having the power to execute expenditures and access the company’s finances.
It is believed that they either actively or passively participated in the collaboration to defraud DET.
News of the allegations came as the Council for Economic Planning and Development was leading an 85-member trade promotion group to Singapore that began yesterday, aiming to explore partnerships between Taiwan and Singapore in the fields of biotechnology, digital content, urban renewal and business investment.
The three-day visit is part of Taiwan’s efforts to accelerate its pace of business and investment expansion abroad since signing the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with Beijing, Council for Economic Planning and Development Minister Christina Liu (劉憶如) said.
The council has set up a global business promotion operations group aimed at establishing stronger ties with Asia-Pacific economies and achieving better global positioning for Taiwan, Liu said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to