The Taiwan High Court’s Kaohsiung branch yesterday reversed a lower court verdict, finding all five defendants in a 2013 pollution case involving Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光半導體) not guilty on various charges related to discharging wastewater from the company’s K7 plant into the Houjing River (後勁溪).
The court acquitted four ASE executives and employees of all charges, including K7 plant general manager Su Ping-shou (蘇炳碩), plant wastewater section director Tsai Chi-hsun (蔡奇勳) and two wastewater section engineers — Yu Chih-hsien (游志賢) and Liu Wei-cheng (劉威呈).
Yesterday’s second ruling in the ongoing trial also cleared ASE of charges, meaning the company does not have to pay a NT$3 million (US$90,901) fine imposed by the Kaohsiung District Court in the first ruling on Oct. 20 last year.
Photo: Chang Chung-yi, Taipei Times
In the first ruling, the court found the four defendants guilty, but gave suspended sentences ranging from 16 months to 22 months, related to breaches of the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法).
Prosecutors appealed to the higher court at that time, saying the punishments were too lenient, as suspended sentences meant none of the defendants had to serve jail terms.
Another ASE K7 plant engineer, Ho Teng-yang (何登陽), who was found not guilty in last year’s ruling, had his verdict upheld by the high court.
ASE, said to be world’s largest IC packaging company, was accused of dumping industrial wastewater containing carcinogenic compounds and other toxic substances in the Houjing River after reports of discoloration and suspected pollution in October 2013.
Yesterday’s ruling was based on the judge’s belief that ASE had treated the wastewater and waste sludge differently, and that if any violations had occurred, they would be of the Water Pollution Control Act (水污染防治法).
The wastewater in question was not “hazardous industrial waste,” so the first ruling was wrong to have cited violations of the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法), yesterday’s ruling said.
The ruling said that Water Pollution Control Act laws regarding the discharge of toxic wastewater by businesses were only amended in February, and therefore a punishment cannot be meted out for a case from 2013.
The ruling also said that ASE employees had added extra amounts of alkaline liquid into wastewater to neutralize its acidity on the day pollution levels were recorded (Oct. 1, 2013), with pH levels shown to have returned to legal discharge standards by 8pm that night.
“Although there were shortcomings on that day’s processing and treatment of wastewater, it was not done deliberately, nor was it done in a haphazard way... Therefore, there were flaws in the first ruling,” it said.
It also said that prosecutors provided only one fish specimen and one sample from the riverbed as evidence of pollution, without presenting samples from other locations, or samples from preceding and subsequent times for comparison, adding that as reasonable doubt remains, the defendants should be acquitted of the charges.
The Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office said it would decide whether to appeal the case after reviewing the ruling.
‘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
‘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
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