Want China Times, CNA 2013-12-17
Kao Chen-li is handcuffed at a police station in Changhua, Dec. 16. (Photo/Chung Wu-ta) |
The owner
of an edible oil company at the center of one of Taiwan's largest food safety
scandals in recent years was given a 16-year sentence Monday and detained
immediately.
Kao
Chen-li, chairman of Chang Chi Foodstuff, was handcuffed and taken away when he
reported to a police station as a condition of his bail.
He had
chosen not to appear before the Changhua District Court for his sentencing.
In his
absence, the court sentenced him to the lengthy prison term for multiple counts
of false labeling of merchandise and fraud, in violation of the Criminal Code.
Kao was also found guilty of violating the Act Governing Food Sanitation.
In addition
to the sentence, his company based in the central county of Changhua was
ordered to pay NT$50 million (US$1.69 million).
Two other
defendants in the case — a chief of oil formula at Chang Chi and an employee
responsible for mixing the ingredients — were each sentenced to two years and
ten months, suspended for five years.
Kao's
lawyer said that his client would appeal.
The public
was shocked by the revelation in October that Chang Chi, the producer of the
popular Tatung brand of cooking oils, had mixed premium olive and grapeseed
oils with less expensive cottonseed oil and sold them as 100% pure products.
Kao also
ordered his workers to add potentially harmful chemicals, including copper
chlorophyllin, to the products without the approval of authorities. The
substances were added to Tatung olive oil and grapeseed oil to give them a
darker, and presumably purer, appearance.
Until Chang
Chi was shut down and fined NT$28 million (US$945,100) in mid-October by the
county government, it had sold dozens of lines of adulterated and falsely
labeled oil products for at least seven years, worth many billions of Taiwanese
dollars.
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