Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團), which caused a toxic spill that killed tonnes of fish in central Vietnam last year, was fined a second time for illegally burying “harmful” waste, official sources said yesterday.
The deadly dump from Formosa’s US$11 billion steel plant in Ha Tinh Province sparked one of the nation’s worst environmental catastrophes, decimating livelihoods along swathes of coastline and prompting months of rare protests in the authoritarian country.
Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp (台塑河靜鋼鐵) was initially fined US$500 million for pouring toxic chemicals — including cyanide — into the ocean in April last year, and has now been ordered to pay an additional US$25,000 on separate charges of burying harmful solid waste, the Vietnamese Supreme Court’s official Cong Ly newspaper reported.
A local contractor is also to be fined US$20,000 for helping dispose of the 100m3 of waste, the paper added.
A provincial official confirmed the latest fine, without providing further details.
The waste was buried in July last year and local residents reported seeing trucks ferrying the material to a farm belonging to the contractor hired to dispose of it.
Police confirmed the waste came from Formosa and launched an investigation last year.
Officials would not comment on why it took more than a year to issue the nominal fines.
The toxic spill set off angry demonstrations against the company and the government in the one-party state that routinely jails its critics. Several activists have been arrested and convicted for their involvement in the protests, including a 22-year-old blogger who was last month jailed for seven years.
Formosa’s huge steel plant, which was under construction at the time of the disaster, was in April given a green light to resume operations after officials found it had addressed dozens of violations. Several officials were punished or fired after the disaster, which saw beaches littered with fish, including large offshore species.
Vietnam has been accused of ignoring environmental concerns on its march toward rapid development, although the issue has become central for some groups on social media.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
RSS