Prosecutors yesterday presented fresh evidence in their appeal against the Changhua District Court’s ruling last year that Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) executives were not guilty of breaching the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法).
Officials at the Taichung Branch of the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said that the Changhua District Court admitted questionable food product testing results as evidence and dismissed evidence that was unfavorable to former Ting Hsin Oil and Fat Industrial Co (頂新製油實業) chairman Wei Ying-chun (魏應充).
Prosecutor Lee Ching-yi (李慶義) said that Ting Hsin imported animal-feed-grade material from Vietnam-based oil manufacturer Dai Hanh Phuc Co (大幸福), and described it in its customs declaration as fit for human consumption.
Photo: Chang Jui-chen, Taipei Times
Lee said that the company which certified the food fit for human consumption was called Vinacontrol — a Vietnamese company providing inspection and testing certification for food and chemical industries.
“Our investigation revealed that Ting Hsin paid about 2 million Vietnamese dong, about NT$3,000, in bribes to Vinacontrol for each of the testing certifications,” Lee said. “Incredibly, the testing results for the five submitted oil samples all have the same numbers for the five main parameters analyzed — free fatty acid content, acid value, iodine value, saponification value and water content. The figures were the same down to two decimal places,” he added.
The likelihood of the analyzed samples having the same values for the five parameters is 10 billion to one, Lee said.
“These were obviously falsified testing results,” he said.
The Changhua District Court submitted requests via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the Vietnamese government check Dai Hanh Phuc’s oil products, and had received official documents which stated that the oil was for making animal feed only, and unfit for human consumption, Lee said.
“This evidence was not favorable to Ting Hsin. However, the district court ruled these documents inadmissible,” Lee said. “The judges prevented the admission of evidence not favorable to Ting Hsin’s defense.”
Lee also presented the results of an investigation by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office into the Ting Hsin tainted oil case, with documents indicating that Wei, who was involved in the company’s main decisionmaking body in August 2010, had instructed employees to add low-grade palm oil into the production process at Ting Hsin Oil and Fat Industrial Co.
“The low-grade palm oil used by Ting Hsin contained high levels of unsaturated fatty acids that are detrimental to human health. However, Wei instructed that it be added into the mixed oil products,” Lee alleged.
“We can see that the executives of Ting Hsin were making high profits from oil products by cheating consumers and damaging people’s health, and as Wei was the main figure in the scheme, we seek to overturn the district court’s not guilty ruling,” Lee said.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai