The High Court yesterday upheld a ruling that former Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) executive Wei Ying-chun (魏應充) be fined and not face more jail time for his role in a 2014 cooking oil scandal.
The High Court’s Taichung Branch upheld the decision on 83 counts — which carried a 10-year, two-month prison sentence that could be commuted to a fine of NT$3.71 million (US$120,800), or NT$1,000 per day of the prison term — after the High Prosecutors’ Office did not appeal.
The decision to commute the penalty sparked outrage online, with comments on the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) article about the ruling condemning the justice system.
Photo: Chang Jui-chen, Taipei Times
One Internet user surnamed Kuo (郭) wrote: “How can judges permit him to merely pay a fine and avoid prison?”
“He and the Wei family are rich. They only fear getting locked up,” they said. “This kind of ruling encourages wealthy people to commit crimes.”
A person surnamed Chien (錢) wrote that a “10-year sentence means it is a serious crime, so he should be imprisoned. The dinosaur judges and prosecutors who decided not to appeal should be charged with dereliction of duty.”
“Are Taiwan’s courts permitting criminals who are rich to not serve prison time?” another person wrote.
Wei has been sentenced to prison three times for his role in the scandal.
Most recently, he was convicted in July last year and sentenced to nine years and two months for contravening the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法) and other offenses.
Wei was released on January after serving only six months, with judicial officials saying that portions of the sentence could be commuted to fines totaling NT$176 million, which the Wei family paid in January, and that he was eligible for parole for good behavior.
Moreover, Wei’s sentence included time he had already served pending earlier investigations and hearings, they said.
In 2014, investigators found that Wei and other company executives instructed that animal feed-grade material from Vietnamese firm Dai Hanh Phuc Co be imported.
Wei sought to cut costs by changing the formulas for 14 blended-oil products his companies produced, including one falsely marketed as a premium class of blended oil that was actually 98 percent palm oil.
The scandal created a food-safety furor and led to class-action lawsuits against Ting Hsin and its subsidiaries.
Wei’s first conviction was for breaches of food safety rules and fraud, with the Intellectual Property Court in April 2017 handing him a two-year term, of which he served just over 500 days before being paroled in December 2018.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
UNITED: The other candidates congratulated Cheng on her win, saying they hoped the new chair could bring the party to victory in the elections next year and in 2028 Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday won the party’s chair election with 65,122 votes, or 50.15 percent of the votes. It was the first time Cheng, 55, ran for the top KMT post, and she is the second woman to hold the post of chair, following Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), who served from 2016 to 2017. Cheng is to succeed incumbent Eric Chu (朱立倫) on Nov. 1 for a four-year term. Cheng said she has spoken with the other five candidates and pledged to maintain party unity, adding that the party would aim to win the elections next year and
RSS