A China-based Taiwanese businessman yesterday said Taipei failed to provide assistance when Chinese employees, in collaboration with police, expropriated his company and sent him to prison on fraud charges.
Chang Chiu-lin (張九麟), who was released from prison in Anhui Province, China, about a year ago, told his story at a press conference to highlight miscarriages of justice in China and called for the government to pay attention to -problems facing Taiwanese businesses operating there.
Having traveled to Anhui to take over a salt mine set up by his father nine years ago, Chang said he was detained on June 11, 2009, after he reported to authorities on Jan. 12 that year that the company had been expropriated by a Chinese deputy general manager following the death of his father.
Photo: Taipei Times
The company, originally an individual proprietorship enterprise owned by his father, had been re-registered as a domestic-funded enterprise, Chang said.
Chang said he won his first lawsuit against the deputy general manager, whom he accused of taking over his assets, but Chang was unexpectedly sentenced to seven months in prison on fraud charges.
He said he suspected that Li Jun (李駿), the chief of the police in Anhui Province’s Dingyuan County, was involved in his detention.
Chang said he had appealed to the Straits Exchange Foundation and its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, to intervene in this case, but received no response at any point in time.
Chen Hsin-hsiung (陳新雄), a senior specialist at the foundation, said he was not aware of the case, but promised to look into it.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾), who attended the press conference, asked Chen about the number of Taiwanese in China who have had or are experiencing similar miscarriages of justice.
Chen said he was not in a position to provide a figure.
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