The Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office has rejected an appeal by eight investors accusing YesHealth Group (源鮮農場) chairman Winston Tsai (蔡文清) of fraud.
The Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office had in December last year dropped the charges against Tsai and four other people, while the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office last month rejected the appeal, citing insufficient evidence.
Known as an agri-biotech pioneer in Taiwan, Tsai previously headed Vegfab Agricultural Technology Co (野菜工房科技公司), which developed large-scale indoor vegetable production through vertical farming, deploying LED lighting, hydroponics, high-tech system controls and organic farming practices.
The company was in 2012 bought by US-based Transakt Bio Agritech Ltd, which sold it in 2015, when it attracted the interest of Taiwanese investors.
Tsai now heads YesHealth Group, which is promoted as the largest vertical farming company in Asia, providing fresh vegetable products to markets worldwide, supported by sustainable practices to meet climate change and food security challenges.
The investors alleged that Tsai in 2013 organized business seminars promoting Vegfab as a subsidiary of Transakt, which has linked up with supermarket chains in Taiwan to supply vegetables, and offered people a chance to buy Transakt shares.
The investors later accused Tsai of fraud, along with four executives of Vegfab and Transakt, claiming that they did not receive shares of Transakt after their investment, and were later told that Transkat is not registered in Taiwan.
Responding to the accusations, Tsai said that five of the investors were his neighbors who knew about Transakt’s business details and had asked him for help to invest, so he introduced the two sides.
Tsai said that during the seminar he presented Vegfab’s business and agricultural technology, but did not talk about company shares or say that he was employed by Transakt, and is not familiar with its financial details.
After an investigation, prosecutors said the eight investors had held meetings and paid visits to assess the business, and then decided to become shareholders.
The invested money did not go into Tsai’s account, the investigation showed.
As such, prosecutors dropped the charges against Tsai, saying the investors knew Tsai as neighbors and friends, and that they made a personal decision to invest, which cannot be deemed as fraud.
As they did not find evidence that Tsai had breached the Securities and Exchange Act (證券交易法), he and the four other defendants were acquitted of all charges, prosecutors said.
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