Chinese prosecutors yesterday charged a British investigator and his US wife with illegally obtaining private information in a case that could be key in a bribery investigation into GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK).
Peter Humphrey and Yu Yingzeng (虞英曾) ran risk consultancy frim ChinaWhys Ltd, whose clients included GSK, and their testimony is being closely watched for any comments on the British drugmaker.
The couple’s arrest over a year ago coincided with the Chinese government’s probe into allegations that GSK staff had funneled hundreds of millions of British pounds through travel agencies to bribe local doctors and health officials to boost sales and raise prices.
Photo: AFP / Official Weibo of Number One People’s Intermediate Court in SHANGHAI
The prosecutors, laying out the charges at the start of the trial, said the couple had illegally obtained more than 200 items of private information, including household registration data, real-estate documents and phone records, and then resold the data. GSK was not mentioned in the charge sheet.
According to the Chinese court’s official microblog, Yu said she did not know that the third-party consultants ChinaWhys had hired to get the data had done so illegally.
“In other countries, we were able to conduct similar checks, including personal information and private transactions, legally through courts,” Yu said. “If we had known that it was illegal, my husband and I would have destroyed all traces of this information.”
Chinese authorities have not openly connected the arrest of the couple to the GSK probe. However, Humphrey said in a note last year, when he was already in detention, that he felt “cheated” by GSK, adding that the drugmaker had not shared full details of the bribery allegations.
A GSK spokesman has declined to comment on the trial. The drugmaker said last month that the issues relating to its China business were “very difficult and complicated.”
Foreign reporters were given unusual access to the trial after lobbying by the US and UK embassies.
The court’s microblog was updated regularly. A television in the media room also momentarily broadcast a grainy image which showed Humphrey, dressed in a polo T-shirt and jacket, sitting down inside the courtroom. He appeared to look weary.
The couple’s son, Harvey, was also in the courtroom with embassy officials.
The trial has unnerved China’s risk consultancy community, whose members are much in demand by multinationals and foreign investors to gather information on potential partners or firms in China, where such information is not easily available.
It also coincides with a growing number of Chinese anti-trust probes that have seen authorities raid the offices of Western firms, highlighting the obstacles foreign companies face in navigating China’s murky business world.
Foreign firms must adhere to anti-corruption laws while operating in China amid more stringent enforcement of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and an increase in the number of Chinese firms involved in overseas deals.
Humphrey is expected to plead guilty to the charges, which carry a maximum sentence of three years in jail. The verdict of the trial could take up to a month to be delivered.
In testimony read out in court, Humphrey said the due diligence services offered by ChinaWhys largely relied on publicly available records and interviews with executives.
“For projects that required background checks, we engaged a third-party consultancy that provided household registration data. We were only paying for their services; we never purchased or obtained such data directly ourselves,” he said in a transcript released on the court’s official microblog.
Humphrey also said he had not sold the private information obtained.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six