The former head of the refinery division of state-run oil supplier CPC Corp, Taiwan removed his ankle monitor and went missing in Pingtung County yesterday, just days before he was due to be sentenced for corruption.
In a statement, the Ciaotou District Court said that it activated a response plan after receiving a notification that former CPC executive Hsu Han (徐漢), who was to be sentenced on Monday next week, had removed his electronic monitoring device.
The Chinese-language United Daily News reported that Hsu’s ankle monitor stopped sending out signals at about noon, and that law enforcement later recovered the broken device in Pingtung’s Wanluan Township (萬巒).
Photo: Taipei Times file photo
Prosecutors “strongly suspect” that Hsu — who has family members overseas and who had applied unsuccessfully for permission to travel abroad for his son’s wedding while out on bail — headed south toward the Pingtung coast to be smuggled out of Taiwan by sea, the report said.
Now in his mid-60s, Hsu took over as chief executive of CPC Corp, Taiwan’s refinery division in Kaohsiung in 2019.
In January 2022, Ciaotou prosecutors and officials from the Ministry of Justice’s Agency Against Corruption searched Hsu’s office, seizing NT$27.1 million (US$848,121) in cash.
Hsu used his procurement authority limit of NT$200 million to steer eight purchasing contracts worth almost NT$1 billion to select companies, which in turn paid him NT$16.86 million in bribes, prosecutors said.
In May of that year, prosecutors indicted Hsu and 20 other suspects from three companies for contravening the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) and other crimes.
After being detained for more than a year in the run-up to his trial, Hsu, who alone among the suspects maintained his innocence, was granted NT$5 million bail in June 2023, though he was banned from leaving the country and required to wear an ankle monitor.
In 2024, the Ciaotou District Court rejected a request by Hsu to travel abroad to attend his son’s wedding.
There was ample reason to believe Hsu could try to flee, as his two sons had lived abroad for many years and his wife left Taiwan in 2023, the court said.
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