Prosecutors yesterday detained four suspects and released seven others on bail after questioning in connection with a corruption probe of six state-operated medical institutes, including the main branches of the Taipei City Hospital and Taichung Hospital, which are administered by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
The case centers on Rotary Trading Co (老達利貿易公司), a Taipei-based supplier of medical equipment and a distributor of Toshiba medical products.
Rotary Trading is accused of bribing hospital personnel to obtain contracts to supply new medical equipment, including X-ray machines, computerized tomography scanners and ultrasonic scanners.
Two hospitals affiliated with the military — Kaohsiung Armed Forces General Hospital and Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital — are also linked to the scandal.
The head physicians at the state-operated public and military hospitals posted bail ranging from NT$100,000 to NT$500,000 (US$3,199 to US$15,994), prosecutors said.
Rotary Trading board chairman Lin Yu-liang (林育良) and deputy general manager Tsai Chin-sun (蔡金蓀), along with a Kaohsiung branch manager surnamed Liu (劉) and a salesperson surnamed Hsu (許), were the four detained, they said.
Prosecutors said the four are accused of bribery and breaches of the Anti-Corruption Act (貪汙治罪條例).
Concerned about collusion over evidence and testimony, prosecutors applied to a court for the four to be detained and denied communication rights, they said.
Raids and seizure of evidence at many locations on Tuesday were headed by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office and the Ministry of Justice’s Agency Against Corruption, prosecutors said.
According to the Agency Against Corruption, Rotary Trading employees regularly paid bribes and gave electronic products as gifts to physicians and officials in charge of procurement and tender contracts, for which the company was able to secure at least nine major contracts for new medical equipment, with sales associated with the deals worth more than NT$100 million.
Investigators said that head physicians and officials at each hospital received about 3 to 10 percent of a contract’s value in kickbacks.
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