PetroChina Co (中國石油天然氣) supplier Wison Engineering Services Co (惠生工程) said Chinese authorities froze some of its bank accounts and its chief financial officer Chen Wenfeng (陳文峰) quit amid an investigation into graft surrounding the nation’s biggest oil firm.
Regulators questioned Wison about “certain projects,” took records and froze bank accounts, the company said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange yesterday.
It was not given reasons for authorities seizing its accounts, although some have been unfrozen.
Wison chairman and founder Hua Bangsong (華邦嵩) and a finance manager at one of its units, Zhao Hongbin (趙宏彬), continue to assist authorities with their probe, the statement said.
“Hua is not contactable and he isn’t able to discharge his daily duties in relation to the group’s business operation and administration,” Wison said. “The company is still liaising with the regulatory authorities, assessing the impact of the investigations on its normal operation, and taking actions to manage cash flow and risks.”
Wison said on Sept. 3 that Hua was helping with unspecified investigations, a day after its shares plunged 16 percent and were suspended from trading.
China is probing PetroChina’s former chairman Jiang Jiemin (蔣潔敏) and four senior executives for graft. The nation’s largest oil producer was Wison’s biggest customer before last year.
Wison’s revenue from contracts with PetroChina was about 111 million yuan (US$18.1 million), or 5.6 percent of total sales, in the first half of this year, according to a statement on Friday last week. Outstanding contracts with PetroChina are worth 204 million yuan, it said.
In last year’s listing document, Wison said it had a nine-year business relationship with PetroChina. In the three years to 2011, its revenue from PetroChina and its subsidiaries amounted to 63 percent, 80 percent and 58 percent of sales, the document said.
Jiang has been dismissed from his post as head of the state assets regulator and is under investigation, Xinhua news agency reported on Sept. 2.
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
RSS