The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday urged President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to explain her ties with the business community, following the indictment of former Academia Sinica president Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) on corruption charges.
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office on Monday indicted Wong on charges of corruption and misconduct as a public servant, in a case that was exposed in February last year and involves the development of a cancer drug by biotech company OBI Pharma Inc (台灣浩鼎).
Speaking at a news conference in Taipei, KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Hu Wen-chi (胡文琦) questioned the relationship between Tsai and Wong.
“When Tsai was embroiled in the Yu Chang Biologies case, Wong threw his support behind Tsai. Also, there were numerous rumors that Tsai initially intended to ask Wong to be her running mate in last year’s presidential election,” Hu said.
The Yu Chang Biologies case emerged in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, when the KMT accused Tsai — the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) presidential candidate — of playing an improper role in the formation of Yu Chang Biologics Co (宇昌生技), now known as TaiMed Biologics Inc (中裕新藥).
Though the now-defunct Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Division cleared Tsai of any wrongdoing in August 2012, the case is believed to be one of the main reasons behind Tsai’s election loss to then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Categorizing Tsai as a descendant of a local dignitary, Hu said OBI Pharma apparently enjoyed close ties with Tsai’s family, as evidenced by Tsai’s encouraging words to OBI Pharma chairman Michael Chang (張念慈) after the failure of the company’s breast cancer vaccine in clinical trials.
“It emerged that Fu-tai Investment Co (富鈦投資), for which Tsai’s brother, Tsai Ying-yang (蔡瀛陽), is a board member, is the fifth-largest stockholder in OBI Pharma, owning 3.25 million shares,” Hu said, adding that Fu-tai Investment was named Chieh-sheng Investment Co (潔生投資), after Tsai Ing-wen’s father, Tsai Chieh-sheng (蔡潔生).
After the OBI Pharma scandal snowballed, Hu said Tsai Ying-yang pledged to dispose of all the OBI Pharma shares he owned within a year and in a manner that did not affect the market.
“What is the latest progress in that matter? How much profit has been reaped from the sales? Tsai Ing-wen should come out and give us a clear explanation,” Hu said.
Prosecutors have already cleared the president’s family of any wrongdoing in the OBI Pharma case, DPP spokesman Wang Ming-sheng (王閔生) said, urging the KMT to stop making unsubstantiated claims.
“The KMT already tried to link Tsai Ing-wen with Wong last year to malign the president. Such behavior is irresponsible and KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) should issue an apology,” Wang 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:
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater