Academia Sinica president Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) on Thursday apologized for the controversy caused by the sale of his daughter’s shares in a pharmaceutical company.
Wong, who is currently in the US on leave, said in a report submitted to the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee that his decision last month to sell his daughter’s shares in OBI Pharma Inc on her behalf was based on a financial planner’s advice.
Wong said his daughter was living in the US and gave consent for him to trade the stocks on her behalf.
The sale of the stocks, just days before the company announced that its new cancer drug has failed a phase of the clinical trials, sparked allegations of insider trading, particularly as Wong is a biochemist who is considered an expert on the development of the drug.
Wong said his denial early last month that he held any shares in Taiwanese biotech companies was not meant to obscure his daughter’s ownership of OBI Pharma shares.
He apologized for the controversy caused by his statement and for commenting on the drug trial results in late February.
Wong, who took up the post of head of the government-sponsored Academia Sinica in 2006, tendered his resignation over the spiraling controversy at the end of last month, but it was not accepted by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖), who heads the legislative Education and Culture Committee, said Wong’s report had not cleared up all the questions surrounding the share sale.
The committee will schedule a time for Wong to explain the matter in person when he returns from the US on Thursday, Chen said.
In particular, Wong will have to answer the question of whether the stock sales were linked to the failed drug trials, Chen said.
In a meeting of the legislative Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee on Thursday, Academia Sinica Vice President Andrew Wang (王惠鈞) said the research institute would review a rule that requires its staff to disclose the interests of close family members, including parents, siblings and grandchildren, but not children.
Meanwhile, Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) said his ministry is investigating whether Wong evaded gift tax when he gave his daughter the funds to buy OBI Pharma shares.
The insider trading allegation falls under the purview of the Financial Supervisory Commission, Chang said.
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:
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