The Intellectual Property Court yesterday sentenced former Ting Hsin Group (頂新集團) senior executive Wei Ying-chun (魏應充) to two years in prison over a tainted oil scandal.
The ruling is final and cannot be appealed, the court said.
Wei was charged with providing false information that misled consumers and ordering the group’s employees to adulterate edible oils.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
In November 2013, Ting Hsin Oil and Fat Industrial Co (頂新製油實業) was found to have adulterated its olive oil products with oils from Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory Co (大統長基食品公司), which had a month earlier been accused of mixing olive oil with sunflower seed oil, cottonseed oil and chlorophyllin.
An e-mail retrieved from the hard drive of a group employee’s computer during a search in 2013 showed that Wei, who was at the time the president of Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品), a subsidiary of Ting Hsin, gave executive orders to mix oils used in Wei Chuan Foods products.
The products, branded as 100 percent pure olive oil, contained only 1 percent olive oil, with the rest consisting of palm oil and about 1 percent grapeseed oil.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
The Taipei District Court in March last year ruled that Wei and other suspects violated the Criminal Code and the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法) by engaging in fraud and falsifying product labels, and sentenced Wei to four years in prison.
The Intellectual Property Court took over jurisdiction of the case after Wei appealed the first ruling and the prosecutors’ office acknowledged that the case infringed on intellectual property rights.
The court yesterday found Wei guilty of falsifying information and misleading consumers for profit.
However, the court dropped the accusation that Wei instructed employees to mix the oils, saying there is no proof that Wei instructed the company to lower the standards of inspection due to overhead costs.
The court said that all products examined by Wei Chuan Foods had passed inspections.
It said Wei had advised the company to pay attention to raw material prices to lower the company’s costs, adding that Wei had also instructed the company to increase its product standards.
Wei’s lawyer, Yu Ming-hsien (余明賢), said his client was calm, adding that Wei hopes the company’s staff can return to their lives after the conclusion of legal proceedings which has caused them duress over the years.
Additional reporting by CNA
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