Authorities have detained Su Yi (蘇怡), the president of jewelry firm Color Stone (彩石珠寶), and another company executive on suspicion of fraud.
Su and a general manager surnamed Lee (李) were detained and their communications restricted on Wednesday last week, after New Taipei City prosecutors and police on May 6 searched the Color Stone offices and six other locations, prosecutors said.
Su and her executives operated investment programs focused on diamonds and gemstones, promising investors guaranteed returns of 15 percent each year and a bonus for each quarter, they said.
From 2016, more than 100 people invested about NT$200 million (US$6.68 million at the current exchange rate) in the scheme, prosecutors said.
Su and Color Stone had previously featured in the media for sponsoring entertainment and film industry events featuring the firm’s jewelry.
A woman surnamed Liao (廖) said that she believed in the investment program because Su is a high-profile woman in the jewelry business.
Overall, she invested NT$1.6 million in the scheme, Liao said.
Liao told investigators that she had received the quarterly bonus for the first year, but then the bonus was delayed last year.
Su promised to pay the investors in installments, but did not, so Liao and other investors filed complaints with the police, she said.
Su also allegedly launched the “Color Stone Royal Club,” which people had to pay NT$9 million to join, prosecutors said, adding that Su promised members that they could share jewelry from her company for special events.
New Taipei prosecutors said that Su and Lee face charges of fraud and breaching the Banking Act (銀行法).
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift