Former Academia Sinica president Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) on Friday protested a reprimand from the Judicial Yuan’s Public Functionary Disciplinary Sanction Commission for his so-called “failure” to report personal property and a possible conflict of interest in connection with OBI Pharma Inc (浩鼎), saying that the move reflects “a serious misunderstanding of the facts.”
Wong served as Academia Sinica’s president from October 2006 to May 2016 and is now a research fellow at the academy’s Genomics Research Center.
Although indicted by the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office on corruption charges in connection with the firm, Wong was in December last year acquitted of all charges by the Shilin District Court.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Prosecutors in January said they would not appeal the ruling.
However, the sanction commission on Wednesday reprimanded Wong, saying that he had shown two of eight incidents of misconduct identified by the Control Yuan.
When reporting his personal property in 2012, Wong should have declared possession of 529 shares of OBI Pharma stock obtained through shareholder Cheng Hsiu-chen (鄭秀珍), the commission said in a news release.
Wong in 2014 failed to disclose a possible conflict of interest when OBI Pharma signed to obtain the exclusive rights from the academy for oligosaccharide synthesis technology, it added.
The two incidents, although not directly pertinent to the execution of his duties, seriously damaged the government’s reputation, the commission said.
The other six alleged incidents of misconduct — including asking company chairman Michael Chang (張念慈) to help purchase company shares for his children and allowing personnel from the firm’s partner, Amaran Biotechnology Inc (潤雅生技), to learn techniques at the academy — were not unreasonable or not attributable to Wong, it added.
Wong in a statement on Friday thanked the commission for affirming his innocence on the six incidents, but added that its rebuke for the other two incidents was based on a misunderstanding.
He wrote that he did not report the OBI Pharma shares because they were not his personal property, but gifts bought with family trust funds for his adult children.
He asked Chang to help purchase the shares, but Chang temporarily registered them under another person’s name due to transaction limits, he said, adding that the court had proved them innocent of this misconduct.
The technology transfer was determined by the academy vice president, Wong said, adding that he had only participated in the transfer process as “creator” of the technology and in compliance with government regulations.
The admonition might seem like a minor reprimand, but for him it was a groundless charge, Wong wrote, adding that the public should understand more about the technology transfer process to avoid causing damage to the nation’s technological development.
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