Pingtung County Commissioner Tsao Chi-hung (曹啟鴻) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday denied an allegation that he has been acting as “protector” of the Wei family-owned Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團), which is at the center of the recent tainted cooking oil scandal, saying: “I do not know anyone in the Wei family.”
Tsao made the remarks in response to a display of a photograph of him and former Ting Hsin chairman Wei Ying-chiao (魏應交) taken at the company in 2010.
The photograph was taken when he visited Wei in the wake of Typhoon Morakot to seek his assistance to have slow-selling agricultural goods from the county placed in the Matsusei Supermarket chain, a Ting Hsin subsidiary, Tsao said.
Tsao sued Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus whip Alex Fai (費鴻泰) late on Friday for defamation after Fai alleged that he served as a “patron” of the group.
Fai made the allegations after the Pingtung County Government confirmed that government documents found at Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品工業), a Ting Hsin subsidiary, were sent over by its Public Health Bureau.
The documents said that the government had verified that the oil products Ting Hsin had bought from Vietnam-based manufacturer Dai Hanh Phuc Co (大幸福公司) were suspected to be substandard and urged the health bureaus of the Pingtung and Changhua county governments to launch investigations.
Citing the statement by the Pingtung District Prosecutors’ Office that the documents Ting Hsin had obtained were not specified as classified, Tsao said he believed that the county government’s health bureau officials did not intend to pass on the information contained in the documents to Ting Hsin.
In response to reporters’ questions on whether he would resign to take responsibility for leaking the documents to Ting Hsin, Tsao urged the public “not to trample” low-level civil servants nor to misunderstand the situation or distort the facts.
Meanwhile, KMT Pingtung county commissioner candidate Chien Tai-lang (簡太郎) yesterday demanded a judicial investigation into whether there were higher-ranking officials in the county government had been involved in the alleged leak.
The document leak, along with a case discovered in early September in which a Pingtung-based unlicensed factory owned by Kuo Lieh-cheng (郭烈成) was found to be the provider of recycled waste oil used to produce lard oil, suggested that the county government was fraught with unbelievable flaws, Chien said.
In a leaflet released by the KMT yesterday, the party said the nation has been “scourged” by a “gang of four”: senior Ting Hsin executive Wei Ying-chun (魏應充), Kuo, Tsao and DPP Pingtung county commissioner candidate Pan Men-an (潘孟安).
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