Pingtung County Deputy Commissioner Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱) yesterday accused the Ministry of Health and Welfare of setting up the county government in an alleged leak of classified documents to Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團), saying that the ministry had not marked the documents as “classified.”
“The e-mails that the health ministry sent to local governments were only partially classified. The documents sent to Changhua County Government were designated as classified, while the ones sent to the Pingtung County Government were not,” Chung told a press conference in Taipei yesterday.
“If the documents are not classified, then of course, we cannot be complicit in ‘leaking classified documents,’” he said.
Chung added that he feels the Pingtung County Government has been “set up.”
The Pingtung County Government is governed by the Democratic Progressive Party, while the Changhua County Government is ruled by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The documents in question were delivered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of Health and Welfare on Oct. 8, informing the latter that the oil products Ting Hsin had bought from Vietnam-based manufacturer Dai Hanh Phuc Co (大幸福公司) were suspected to be substandard and urging Changhua’s and Pingtung’s health bureaus to launch investigations.
However, on Thursday, when prosecutors searched the office of Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品), a subsidiary of Ting Hsin International Group that allegedly blended the substandard oils imported from Vietnam into cooking oils it produced and marketed in Taiwan, they discovered the documents in one of the company’s computers.
The health ministry and the KMT on Friday accused the Pingtung County Government of leaking classified information.
Separately on Friday, Tsai Ching-jung (蔡青蓉), a technical specialist with the Pingtung County Government, told a press conference in Pingtung that after she received the directive from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, she contacted the head of Ting Hsin Oil and Fat Industrial Co’s (頂新製油) Pingtung plant so that the plant could prepare the necessary information required by the ministry for the inspection.
Tsai said that when she faxed him information on what was required, she mistakenly included the document in question.
The beleaguered civil servant, who was listed on Friday as a defendant in the information leak case, urged prosecutors to check the telephone conversations she had had to prove that she had not been feeding Ting Hsin confidential information.
She also defended herself by saying that the document was marked “highly” important, but not “confidential.”
Commenting on the matter yesterday, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) said it was certainly a “big mistake” for the public servant to commit such an error. He also criticized the Ministry of Health and Welfare for not clearly designating the documents prior to sending them to the county government.
Additional reporting by CNA
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying