A Taiwanese company on Thursday denied that it had sent a shipment of cocaine paste to Guatemala under the guise of its legitimate product, ultraviolet glazing oil.
Heyio Enterprise said the cocaine paste seized on Monday by Guatemalan anti-narcotics officers must have been substituted for its oil shipment en route to Puerto Quetzal.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the Republic of China embassy in Guatemala confirmed that a cargo ship had arrived in Guatemala carrying 17.6 tonnes of coca paste, the first crude extraction product from coca leaves, in the shipment from Heyio Enterprise in Kaohsiung.
The shipment of cocaine paste was seized by Guatemalan anti-narcotics authorities on Monday, the embassy said.
The bill of lading showed that 16,000kg of UV glazing oil had been shipped from Heyio Enterprise to Alder Trading Co in Guatemala and US$68,690 had been paid in advance for the product, the embassy said.
Guatemalan investigators suspect that Alder Trading Co is a front for an illegal operation, the embassy said.
However, Heyio’s sales manager William Tsai denied the company had sent a shipment of cocaine paste and said he suspected that the UV glazing oil had been substituted with the illegal substance in Mexico, where the cargo was unloaded for customs inspection.
Heyio manufactures chemical raw materials and its main product is UV glazing oil, a common product used for the glazing of magazine covers and books, Tsai said.
He said the company uses only “free on board” shipping, which means the buyer is responsible for the shipping arrangements.
Heyio is only responsible for making the product and taking it to the port in Kaohsiung, where the company is based, he said.
The company has been shipping products to a Guatemalan buyer for the past two to three years without any trouble and it was only the last two or three shipments that had been sent to Alder Trading, at the request of the buyers, to help with the delivery, Tsai said.
Tsai said it is his understanding that Alder Trading ships goods from Kaohsiung to Guatemala via South Korea and Mexico.
The Kaohsiung Customs Office said the cargo in question was shipped from Kaohsiung in June and the documents showed that the UV glazing oil was in the C1 category, which means it was not subject to cargo examination.
Tsai said his company has a good export track record and has made three shipments to its Guatemalan client so far this year. He said the company is still trying to obtain more information from its client about the cocaine case.
Heyio Enterprise is a legally registered company in Taiwan that was established Jan. 6, 2005.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not