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.
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