Taipei prosecutors said yesterday that Mosel Vitelic Inc (茂矽) Chairman Hu Hung-chiu (胡洪九) is likely involved in two separate embezzlement cases that total approximately NT$12 billion.
"We started by investigating the embezzlement case of the Pacific Electric Wire and Cable Co (太電) and then inadvertently discovered that Hu may also be involved in embezzlement case involving Mosel Vitelic Inc and its subsidiary, ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技)," said Chen Hung-ta (陳宏達), spokesman of the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office.
Initially, Hu was alleged to embezzle more than NT$10 billion from the Pacific Electric Wire and Cable Co during his time as chief financial officer between for the company between 1988 and 1998.
According to Chen, while investigating the first embezzlement case, Taipei Prosecutors Chu Ying-hsiang (朱應翔) and Hsu Yung-chin (許永欽) led a raiding party from the Ministry of Justice yesterday to Hu's offices and residence, where they confiscated personal and business-related financial records.
While examining the confiscated documents, prosecutors discovered that Hu might also have stolen at least NT$2 billion of public funds from the two companies in addition to the initial embezzlement case. He also allegedly manipulated company stocks in the stock market, to the dismay of investors, who lost money, an official said.
A gag order prevented Chen from revealing all the details of the investigation toward the two alleged embezzlement cases. However, local Chinese-language newspapers reported that Chu went to Hong Kong secretly to interrogate two witnesses sometime last month and will use their testimony against Hu.
In the meantime, during the raids at Hu's offices and residence, prosecutors did not locate Hu.
As of press time yesterday, Chen said that prosecutors have not planned to summon Hu but will definitely do so whenever necessary. In addition, prosecutors have not filed a travel ban with the court to prevent Hu from leaving the country.
When called by reporters yesterday morning, Hu and said that he is not hiding and he is not planning on leaving the country.
"I will visit prosecutors in person first thing on Monday morning. I believe that the raids were a necessary measures for prosecutors to do their jobs. No big deal," Hu said.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: