A legislative committee yesterday adopted a resolution demanding that Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) return to Taiwan from the US as soon as possible to clear up a controversy in connection with alleged insider trading of a pharmaceutical company’s shares.
If Wong cannot return to Taiwan immediately, he should submit a written report to the Legislative Yuan’s Education and Culture Committee within one week, the resolution said.
He is required to deliver an oral report to the committee within one week of his return, it added.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Wong, who is in the US for academic activities, had earlier said that he would return to Taiwan to attend a hearing on the case scheduled for yesterday.
On Tuesday, he called President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to express his intention to resign from his post as head of the nation’s highest academic institution, citing health reasons, and tendered his written resignation on Wednesday.
Ma rejected Wong’s resignation and instructed him to return to Taiwan as soon as possible to report to him and the legislature, according to Presidential Office spokesman Charles Chen (陳以信).
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Academia Sinica is under the direct administrative supervision of the Presidential Office.
The controversy flared up following Wong’s endorsement of a new cancer drug by publicly listed biotech company OBI Pharma Inc (台灣浩鼎), even though the company announced on Feb. 21 that the drug had failed second and third-round clinical trials, news that sent the company’s stock price plunging.
Wong is a biochemist considered to be an expert on the theory behind OBI Pharma’s cancer drug.
On March 3, Wong issued a statement through Academia Sinica that he did not hold any shares in Taiwan’s biotech companies.
However, Next Magazine reported on Wednesday last week that Wong’s daughter, Wong Yu-shioh (翁郁秀), obtained 3 million OBI Pharma shares in 2012 at the price of NT$31 per share before it was listed on the emerging stock market.
The company was listed on the over-the-counter market at NT$310 per share the following year.
The revelation fueled accusations against Wong Chi-huey of a conflict of interests and possible insider trading.
An initial investigation found that Wong Yu-shioh sold more than 10,000 of her OBI Pharma shares three months before the announcement of the cancer drug’s trial failure.
Wong Chi-huey yesterday penned a letter addressed to his Academia Sinica colleagues.
“My personal affairs have lately became the subject of public controversy, with an impact on our institution’s reputation that is profoundly disturbing to me. I am currently abroad and physically indisposed, and I am therefore unable to attend our March 30 report to the Legislative Yuan,” he said in the letter. “I had tendered my resignation to the president and will, upon concluding my affairs abroad, immediately return [to Taiwan] to make an explanation [about this affair].”
“I will continue in the future to dedicate my professional knowledge to science and biotechnological research in Taiwan,” he added.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS