Shihlin Prosecutor Chiu Chih-hung (邱智宏) yesterday asked judges to detain two more employees of Procomp Informatics Ltd for allegedly assisting company chairwoman Sophie Yeh (葉素菲) to steal company assets.
The employers are former general manager Hsieh Shih-fang (謝世芳) and financial department officer Chiu Wen-chih (邱文智).
"Chiu [Chih-hung] and his fellow prosecutors believe that Hsieh and Chiu [Wen-chih] are firm suspects and that there is a possibility that they will swap information about their testimony outside of court, so we decided to apply to detain them," said Wang Jen-kuei (
At press time yesterday, the judges were still discussing the detention application.
Wang said that prosecutors led a team of police and special agents from the justice ministry's Bureau of Investigation on a raid of the company's headquarters and subsidiary offices on Tuesday. They also summoned Hsieh, Chiu Wen-chih and employees Lee Chin-wen (
In addition to detention applications for Hsieh and Chiu Wen-chih, prosecutors have applied for bail conditions ranging from NT$600,000 to NT$2 million to be imposed on Lee, Liu and Huang.
Wang said the employees had told prosecutors that they were simply following Yeh's instructions and that they had no idea what Yeh was doing. However, prosecutors were not convinced by the claims.
Yeh has been detained since June 26 on charges of violating the Securities Transaction Law (
According to the prosecutors' investigation, Yeh filed a restructuring proposal with the Shihlin District Court on June 14, but some unusual transactions had made them suspicious.
The same investigation showed that Yeh wired more than US$10 million to one of her US bank accounts on June 15, and that she had provided an unsatisfactory explanation for that transaction as well as for the missing company funds.
Agents from the Bureau of Investigation had tried to locate Yeh and summon her for questioning from June 15, but her where-abouts remained unclear until June 25, when she turned herself in. She was questioned for 17 hours before being transferred to the Shihlin District Prosecutor's Office for more questioning by Chiu Chih-hung.
Prosecutors believe that a large portion of the missing funds was deposited in local bank accounts that have yet to be traced.
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