Medigen Biotechnology Corp chairman Stanley Chang (張世忠) was released on bail yesterday after being questioned over allegations of insider trading activities involving the company’s COVID-19 vaccine-making subsidiary, Taipei prosecutors said.
Chang and 17 other people were on Thursday taken in for questioning by prosecutors after investigators conducted raids and seized documents at 16 venues, including the Medigen Biotechnology Corp office and the homes of some of the suspects.
Medigen Biotechnology Corp is the parent company of Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp (MVC), which develops and manufactures the Medigen COVID-19 vaccine, the only domestically made COVID-19 vaccine that received emergency use authorization in Taiwan.
Photo: CNA
The investigation, headed by the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau and local prosecutors, was originally focused on insider trading allegations against MVC.
However, during that investigation prosecutors were tipped off to look at other practices involving Medigen Biotechnology Corp, including alleged insider trading, irregular trading and financial statement fraud, the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement.
The raids came as prosecutors intensified their probe after finding that corporate insiders passed inside information to relatives or friends to help them make money buying or selling MVC shares from February 2020 to July last year, the bureau said on Thursday.
Chang was released on NT$300,000 bail, while his sister, Chang Tzu-ling (張姿玲), and her husband, Huang Tzu-liang (黃子亮), both members of the parent company’s board of directors, were released on bail of NT$500,000 each, prosecutors said.
Former Medigen Biotechnology Corp chief financial officer Bill Ou (歐朝銓) was released on NT$100,000 bail, prosecutors said.
MVC shares were listed on the over-the-counter market on the Taipei Exchange in April 2018. It started 2020 trading at about NT$19 per share, but skyrocketed to NT$85 per share in mid-July that year as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold around the world.
It fell back to NT$59 the next month and traded at NT$60 to NT$70 for the rest of year.
However, as rumors about its vaccine started to emerge, the stock soared from about NT$72 on Feb. 2 last year to NT$159.59 on Feb. 23, then fell to about NT$115 on Feb. 26 before rising again to NT$211 on April 13.
The stock peaked at NT$280.20 on May 17 last year, tumbled to below NT$130 on June 8 and rebounded again to NT$200 just days later.
The huge price swings, accompanied by seemingly well-timed rumors of whether the vaccine would be approved, led to suspicions of insider trading.
Two people were killed and another nine injured yesterday after being stung by hornets while hiking in New Taipei City’s Rueifang District (瑞芳), with officials warning against wearing perfume or straying from trails during the autumn to avoid the potentially deadly creatures. Seven of the hikers only sustained minor injuries after being stung along the Bafenliao Hiking Trail (八分寮) and made their way down the mountain with a guide, the New Taipei City Fire Department said. Four of them — all male — sustained more serious injuries and were assisted when leaving the mountain, the department said. Two of them, a man surnamed
Recent movements by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have been “highly unusual,” but the military maintains a grasp of the situation, Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) said on Friday, after the military for the first time said it was monitoring troop movements in China’s Dacheng Bay (大埕灣). The minister gave the remarks to reporters before appearing at the legislature on the first day of its new session. The Ministry of National Defense on Thursday evening released an air force surveillance photograph of a PLA Shaanxi Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft, and said it was monitoring the PLA Rocket Force and ground
‘ABNORMITY’: News of the military exercises on the coast of the Chinese province facing Taiwan were made public by the Ministry of National Defense on Thursday Taiwan’s military yesterday said it has detected the Chinese military initiating a round of exercises at a bay area in coastal Fujian Province, which faces Taiwan, since early yesterday morning and it has been closely monitoring the drills. The exercises being conducted at Fujian’s Dacheng Bay featured an undisclosed number of People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) warplanes, warships and ground troops, the Ministry of National Defense said in a press statement. The ministry did not disclose what kind of military exercises are being conducted there and for how long they would be happening, but it did say that it has been closely watching
China’s Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong has asked foreign consulates in Hong Kong to submit details of their local staff, which is more proof that the “one country, two systems” model no longer exists, a Taiwanese academic said. The office sent letters dated Monday last week to consulates in the territory, giving them one month to submit the information it requires. The move followed Beijing’s attempt to obtain floor plans for all properties used by foreign missions in Hong Kong last year, which raised concerns among diplomats that the information could be used for
RSS