Authorities are seeking to extradite a man wanted in a fraud case after he was detained in Thailand when transiting on a flight, Ministry of Justice officials said on Wednesday.
Pharmally International Holding Co chairman Tony Huang (黃文烈) — who is also known as Huang Wen-lieh — and other businesspeople, were indicted on charges of security fraud, stock manipulation and fraudulent financial reporting in 2020, the ministry said.
Authorities are in contact with their counterparts in Thailand to facilitate Huang’s return to Taiwan, it said.
Photo: Taipei Times
Huang and his wife, Chen Shu-hui (陳淑慧), fled to Singapore before a probe was initiated in August 2020, investigators said.
The couple’s adult son, Huang Tzu-yen (黃子晏), and daughter reside there and have Singaporean citizenship, investigators said.
Authorities in 2020 issued an international arrest warrant for Huang, then aged 59, accusing him of illegally transferring NT$700 million (US$22.73 million) of company assets and bank loans to personal accounts.
Reports said that Tony Huang traveled from Singapore to the UK, and was detained in Thailand during a transit on his return flight.
Huang Tzu-yen and Chen apparently manage subsidiary companies in Singapore, and are also wanted in the Pharmally case, the ministry said.
Tony Huang, Chinese real-estate tycoon Wang Mingliang (王命亮) and other Chinese businesspeople allegedly falsified accounts and financial statements to get Pharmally listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in March 2015 in one of the largest securities fraud cases in the past decade, investigators said.
Wang previously owned Luan Huayuan Pharmacy Co in China’s Anhui Province, investigators said.
Wang encountered financial difficulties and sought assistance from Tony Huang, who had been investing in real estate in China’s Xiamen since 2003, investigators said.
Investigators found that Wang transfered ownership of Luan Huayuan Pharmacy and other companies to Tony Huang, who in 2013 changed the name of Luan Huayuan Pharmacy to Pharmally in China.
Using Pharmally’s listing in Taiwan, Tony Huang set up three overseas subsidiaries in 2016, Pharmbac Biological Pte and Pharmetech Biological Pte in Singapore, and Biotis Prima Agrisido in Indonesia, investigators said.
Huang colluded with company executives to falsify documents about purchases of large amounts of Pharmally shares from Sept. 1, 2018, to Oct. 20, 2018, driving the share price to NT$500 from NT$300, creating a deceptive impression of a hot stock, investigators said.
They sold before the price collapsed, with the estimated loss among other investors totaling NT$20 billion, they said.
Tony Huang and the other executives are also accused of forging accounts and financial reports to obtain NT$6.27 billion in loans from four Taiwanese banks — EnTie Commercial Bank, Far Eastern International Bank, Hua Nan Bank and Bank SinoPac.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the