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Two detained for allegedly skewing harbor figures

Prosecutors last night detained two Kaohsiung Harbor officials who allegedly faked the harbor's container handling volume in order to reach a lucrative government target.

The prosecutors' move comes after their overnight questioning of more than 50 workers at the Kaohsiung Harbor and shipping firms over the forgery scandal.

Authorities searched the harbor and shipping firms, seizing computers and five boxes of documents.

"We have yet to determine how much money they may have received through the fake annual TEU report, " Kaohsiung District Prosecutors' Office spokesman Chung Chung-hsiao (鍾忠孝) said yesterday. "Our investigation and raids are still ongoing."

The "TEU" (twenty-foot equivalent unit) is a technical measure of cargo capacity. It is based on the volume of a 20ft-long (6m) shipping container, a standard-sized metal box that can be easily transferred between different modes of transportation, such as ships, trains and trucks.

Kaohsiung Harbor bureau director Hsieh Ming-hui (謝明輝) was questioned on Friday night and released yesterday morning.

The prosecutors originally asked for five individuals to be detained: two from Kaohsiung Harbor, two from Yangming Marine and one from US shipping line APL.

The implicated harbor employees and shipping firm staff allegedly received a total of nearly NT$2 billion (US$62 million) in bonuses, incentives and tax exemptions for reaching Kaohsiung Harbor's handling target of 10 million TEUs last year.

Chuang said yesterday that Prosecutor Liu Ho-shan (劉河山) first became suspicious about the container volume in October and prosecutors were tipped off that the numbers were faked in January.

In recent years, Kaohsiung Harbor's world ranking has fallen because of Taiwan's five-decade ban on shipping links with China and the expansion of mega container ports in neighboring countries, especially China.

In the early 1990s, Kaohsiung Harbor ranked third in the world, but it has slipped below Dubai Port and now ranks eighth.

The Transport Ministry said the Kaohsiung Harbor handled 10.2 million TEUs last year, up 4.93 percent from 2006.

The ministry, in light of the scandal, will have to recalculate the figures or dismiss last year's container turnover as invalid if the true figure cannot be compiled.
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