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
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
UNWAVERING: Paraguay remains steadfast in its support of Taiwan, but is facing growing pressure at home and abroad to switch recognition to Beijing, Pena said Paraguayan President Santiago Pena has pledged to continue enhancing cooperation with Taiwan, as he and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida expressed opposition to any unilateral change to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait using force, Japanese media reported on Saturday. Kishida yesterday completed a trip to France, Brazil and Paraguay, his first visit to South America since taking office in 2021. After the Japanese leader and Pena spoke for more than an hour on Friday, exchanging views on the situation in East Asia in the face of China’s increasing military pressure on Taiwan, they affirmed that “unilateral attempts to change the