The Criminal Investigation Bureau yesterday said it had arrested six people on suspicion of illegally stockpiling and selling medical masks made by a factory in central Taiwan.
Bureau officials told a news briefing that they had seized 180,000 masks after raiding the factory and several warehouses on Friday last week.
Factory staff and management have allegedly colluded to sell a total of 700,000 masks for NT$10 (US$0.33) each — double the government-mandated price of NT$5 — and made a profit of NT$5 million, officials said.
Photo: Hsu Kuo-chen, Taipei Times
The factory is reportedly connected to one of the 30 companies making up the national team for mask production, which has been working in collaboration with three government-funded research institutes since February and has a daily capacity of 22 million masks.
The six taken in for questioning were the factory’s warehouse manager, surnamed Lin (林), a sales manager, surnamed Hsieh (謝), and four warehouse staff and junior managers, said Lai Ying-men (賴英門), captain of the bureau’s Sixth Investigation Corps, which has jurisdiction over central Taiwan.
After questioning by Taichung prosecutors, Lin and Hsieh were released on bail of NT$400,000 and NT$600,000 respectively. The other four were released without bail.
Lai said that the bureau started its surveillance in late April after receiving reports that a company based in Taichung’s Wurih District (烏日) had been “stockpiling” masks.
Agents conducted an initial raid and found 490,000 masks at a warehouse, Lai said.
Further investigation revealed that while the company has been producing masks in cooperation with the government’s national requisition program, company officials also operated on the side, setting up another firm to procure materials for manufacturing masks and renting seven warehouses in Taichung and Nantou County to evade checks by police and health authorities.
Bureau agents raided 11 locations in Taichung and Nantou County on Friday, including the factory and its warehouses in Puli Township (埔里), where they seized cash, company documents, accounting books and machines.
Agents also found more than 10,000 defective items and faulty masks returned from pharmacies, which Lai said were used to supplement the under-the-table mask production.
All six are facing pending charges for allegedly breaching Article 12 of the Special Act on COVID-19 Prevention, Relief and Recovery (嚴重特殊傳染性肺炎防治及紓困振興特別條例), which states that people convicted of hoarding or driving up prices of medical equipment, devices, drugs, and disease prevention supplies deemed as such by health authorities for combating the virus outbreak may be jailed for up to five years and fined up to NT$5 million.
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