Taipei prosecutors yesterday indicted eight executives of funeral services provider Chan Yun Enterprise Co (展雲事業公司), including company chairman Chung Ke-hsin (鍾克信), on charges of fraud that is alleged to have deceived investors of NT$18.2 billion (US$601.9 million).
The other seven charged with contravening the Banking Act (銀行法) were chief financial officer Chu Kan-chung (朱淦忠), former chief financial officer Chen Jen-chieh (陳仁杰), board member Chin Kai-wen (金開文), sales manager Yu Hsing-hua (于興華), business manager Lo Shih-chi (羅仕吉), and assistant managers Lee Pei-hsuan (李珮瑄) and Yu Li-chuan (游麗娟).
Prosecutors said an international alert for Chung’s arrest was issued after he left Taiwan following questioning in 2020 over a corruption probe.
Photo: Chien Li-chung, Taipei Times
Authorities tried to serve him with a summons in 2021 regarding the current investigation, and discovered that he had left Taiwan and had not scheduled a return, prosecutors said.
The filing said that Chan Yun from 2012 to 2021 offered up to 10.8 percent yearly return on investments in company-operated burial plots, columbaria and cemeteries in New Taipei City’s Jinsan District (金山), with portions within Yangmingshan National Park (陽明山國家公園).
Records and transaction documents were seized, showing that 9,832 investors bought into the company’s investments.
Prosecutors alleged that Chung and his executives operated a Ponzi scheme, taking money from new investors to pay the promised rewards to earlier investors.
Among the schemes was the Penglai Cemetary Park project in Jinshan, promising a 30 percent return on resale of burial plots after four years, with an initial investment of NT$118,000, prosecutors said, adding that NT$10 billion in debt was left after the scheme collapsed.
Despite hearing of some investors having trouble collecting gains from the company, many people continued to invest, given the firm’s perceived political connections, the filing said.
Some investors were quoted in the filing as saying they trusted Chung’s claims of political influence and had faith in his business acumen, given his family’s background.
Chung’s father, Chung Shih-yi (鍾時益), served as a high-ranking official under Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) before the Chinese Civil War, and graduated from an armed forces institute in China. He was responsible for finances and budgeting for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) troops during the exodus to Taiwan. In Taiwan, he served as head of the KMT central financial committee, in charge of party-run enterprises and investments, and then as minister for budgets and accounting, and director of National Audit Office until his retirement in 1989.
Chung Ke-hsin remains at large and has been charged in absentia.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do