The long arm of the law may put away for six years a high-tech CEO and his octogenarian mother.
The pair are accused of pilfering hundreds of millions of Taiwan dollars from their own company more than a decade ago, and their alleged crimes may have finally come back to haunt them.
On Tuesday, the Taipei District Court sentenced Jason Chang (張虔生), chairman of Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE, 日月光), and his mother to six years in prison for falsifying documents to buy property between 1989 and 1992, when Chang was president of Hung Ching Development (宏璟).
Although the court handed down a guilty verdict, Chang and his mother can still appeal the decision.
Hung Ching Development is a construction company on which the Chang family built its fortune during the 1980s and early 1990s. Money from the company was then used to establish ASE, now the world's second-largest semiconductor packaging and testing company.
Between 1989 and 1992, the mother-and-son pair bought and sold land while shifting up to NT$1.93 billion (US$58.5 million) through the bank accounts of Hung Ching employees, without the workers' knowledge. Chang was the president of the firm during that time, while his mother, Chang Yao Hung-ing (張姚宏影) served as CEO.
Chang and his mother allegedly forged documents to embezzle at least NT$186 million (US$5.7 million) from Hung Ching. This money was shifted between bank accounts in Hong Kong and Taiwan, as the duo misused employee accounts to hide the cash.
The two then attempted a new method to secure funds, borrowing NT$1.15 billion (US$34.8 million) from Citigroup Inc on behalf of Hung Ching to buy a stretch of land.
As the head of ASE, Chang then sold 17 percent of the newly purchased lots to Hung Ching for NT$650 million (US$19.6 million), or roughly half the original purchase price.
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