Wei Chuan Foods (味全食品) Chairman Wei Ying-chung (魏應充) has been released on a bail of NT$10 million but is restricted from leaving the country over suspected involvement in fraudulent actions

November 9, 2013 Leave a comment

Wei Chuan Foods’ chairman out on NT$10 mil. bail

By Joy Lee, The China Post
November 8, 2013, 12:22 am TWN

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Wei Chuan Foods Corporation (味全食品) Chairman Wei Ying-chung (魏應充) has been released on a bail of NT$10 million but is restricted from leaving the country over suspected involvement in fraudulent actions after being questioned by prosecutors, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office (TDPO) announced yesterday.The TDPO dispatched investigators on Wednesday night in an unannounced search of Wei Chuan after the firm was found to have used mislabeled oil purchased from Changchi Foodstuff Factory Co. (大統長基食品).

Huang Mou-hsin, spokesman for the TDPO, said that after searching Wei Chuan’s oil factory, food factory and headquarters, the prosecutor in charge of the case summoned Wei and Wei Chuan General Manager Chang Chiao-hua as defendants.

Huang said that four other managers were also summoned to testify in the case.

“After a night of questioning, prosecutors suspected that Wei and Chang could have been involved in fraud, violations of the Act Governing Food Sanitation and product mislabeling,” said Huang.

“Wei and Chang both denied their complicity in fraud and food safety violations, and prosecutors determined that there is no need to detain them regardless of the fact that they might have colluded (in a possible plot),” said Huang. “Therefore, prosecutors decided to release them on a bail of NT$10 million for Wei and NT$5 million for Chang, with restrictions on leaving the country.”

Huang said that the four managers who were summoned to testify for the case were sent home after questioning.

According to Huang, prosecutors will compare documents seized during a search of Wei Chuan headquarters with statements made by Wei, Chang and the four managers as part of their investigation into the case.

Two photographers were injured by Wei’s security guards yesterday morning while trying to take pictures of Wei entering the TDPO, local reports said.

According to prosecutors, after Changchi was discovered to have mislabeled cooking oil products and added copper chlorophyllin complex into their olive oils, Wei Chuan signed an affidavit indicating that their cooking oil products were all imported from Spain.

However, prosecutors discovered that Wei Chuan had been purchasing low-priced oils manufactured by Changchi to mix into 21 high-priced oil products made by Wei Chuan.

Prosecutors also suspect that even though Wei Chuan might have known that Changchi’s oils were questionable, the company still insisted on intentionally using Changchi’s oils to save on costs.

Wei held a press conference on Tuesday, Nov. 5 to officially apologize to the public and resign as chairman of the GMP Association. Wei claimed that it was not until Changchi officially admitted to mislabeling cooking oil products that Wei Chuan realized the truth.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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