Taiwan charges 46 executives with fraudulently cooking box numbers

TAIWAN authorities have charged 46 executives from Evergreen Marine, Wan Hai, Yang Ming, APL, NYK Logistics as well as the director general of the Kaohsiung harbour bureau with fraud for allegedly inflating cargo volumes to claim government bonuses.

London's Financial Times reported that Kaohsiung prosecutors accused port boss Shieh Ming-Hui and a dozen of his staff with helping five shipping lines claim US$10 million in government rewards over three years. Kaohsiung began an incentive scheme in 2006, offering rental concessions and other rewards for lines bringing more traffic to the port.

Prosecutors say their own calculations show that actual throughput by the five companies' ships fell more than 10 per cent short of that reported by the Kaohsiung harbour bureau in 2006 and 2007, when container traffic at the port peaked at 10.2 million TEU.

Shieh said the port had its own system to gauge cargo volume and he was not aware of the difference between that and the figures ship lines reported. Evergreen also said the case arose out of different calculation methods used by the prosecutors and harbour authorities, and said the company did not falsify any data. Said Wan Hai: "There is clearly a misunderstanding."

(Source: Transport Weekly)