Executives of a real-estate investment company are being investigated for persuading Taiwanese to purchase international properties that allegedly led investors to lose a total of NT$1.2 billion (US$38.96 million).
Police and Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau agents on Thursday raided the eight offices of Asia Pacific International Property Co and Web site Taiwan SouFun, an Asia Pacific affiliate, serving the executives with summons for questioning.
On Friday, Asia Pacific owner Huang Tsui-ping (黃純萍), chief operating officer Lu Wei-hsing (呂威興), executive director Chin Chi-sung (秦啟松) and overseas sales manager Chen Mei-hsuan (陳美璇), as well as Yang Chien-chieh (楊建傑) and his wife, Liao Hsiu-min (廖秀敏), who together operated Taiwan SouFun, were questioned, Taipei prosecutors said.
The executives are suspected of financial fraud and breaching the Banking Act (銀行法), the prosecutors said, adding that they would likely bring other charges as well.
On its Web site, Asia Pacific offered investments in properties in the UK, Australia, China, Malaysia and Southeast Asia.
Prosecutors said they are specifically investigating NT$1.2 billion in allegedly defrauded funds from two UK investment opportunities offered by Asia Pacific: A car park near Glasgow International Airport in Scotland and a hotel in Liverpool, England.
The two UK properties were first promoted in April 2014, with Asia Pacific offering Taiwanese a share in the car park investment for £20,000 (US$25,316) and a share in the hotel for £90,000.
Asia Pacific allegedly guaranteed an 8 percent return on the hotel shares, with investors promised returns of 24 percent over three years, while the carpark shares matured over six years, with investors promised returns of 8 percent for the first two years, 10 percent for the next two and 12 percent for the last two.
Taiwan SouFun reportedly set up a company in the UK to manage the property investments and Yang held investment seminars across Taiwan, promoting the two properties, touting the high returns and persuading Taiwanese to invest with the company.
However, some investors discovered that the UK-registered company declared bankruptcy in 2014, while Yang and other executives allegedly continued to pitch the properties and draw more investors into the scheme.
Prosecutors said they were attempting to discover where the suspects were keeping the invested funds.
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
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
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