The Prosecution dedicated to Consumer Protection First case detected in Taiwan:Unqualified China Gloves Falsely Claim to be Medical Gloves
- Publication Date：
- Last updated：2019-01-05
- View count：1040
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The Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ office received information concerning unqualified gloves and initiated a criminal investigation into possible violation of Pharmaceutical affairs Law.
Prosecutor Yi-Shioung , Cheng and Supervisory Prosecutor Yu-Cheng, Shou, recently received important information concerning a renowned Taiwanese medical company Yi-****. The District Prosecutor’s Office suspected the medical company involved in the trade of low-budget, industrial working gloves from China and transformed into a gloves for the medical use.
The Yi-**** medical manufacturing company had processed those industrial working gloves into fudged, counterfeit, medical examination gloves of a supposed medically-superior grade and switched their packaging. The illegal process brought forward an enormous amount of illegal proceeds.
This office organized a task force to collect evidence for further investigation against the medical company. According to Pharmaceutical affairs Law 2006 Ed (Article 33), producing or manufacturing any product relating to any medical purpose requires certification issued by the Central Health Administration. It is forbidden that companies or industries manufacture any medical items without examination and authorization by the central health administration.
Furthermore, it is required for a manufacturing company involved in the medical trade to commit to the GMP standard before applying a pharmaceutical manufacturing register certificate. Nevertheless, the Yi-**** medical company investigated by the prosecution had only acquired the sales permit regarding pharmaceutical and medical equipment and material.
The director of Yi-**** medical manufacturing company, Hsieh, is suspected of being involved in this import counterfeiting scam concerning the mislabeled medical globes [PVC industrial plastic working gloves] and [Emulsion gloves]. It has been uncovered that the Yi-**** medical company also set up an unregistered industry that had employed a number of south-east Asian foreign workers to process the counterfeited working gloves.
This illegal process involving the foreign workers included packing, sealing, sticking labels, and disinfection. Afterwards, the foreign workers would transfer the industrial working glove into forged medical examination gloves with the label of [Patient medical examination gloves], [Emulsion medical exam gloves]. The medical company then delivered these forged medical exam gloves to domestic hospitals; this illegal action of medical product counterfeiting had seriously threatened the general medical health environment of patients through contamination and bio-hazard from the faked, non-medicine-grade gloves.
After enough evidence to adequately demonstrate that the Yi-**** medical company had being involved illegal activity had been gathered, on January, 6, 2011, Prosecutor Yi-shioung, Cheng, ordered a execution of search and seizure. This task force, consisting of the agents from Investigation Bureau, police force, food and drug administration agency, and Kaohsiung city health administration, were armed with the warrant to search Yi-**** medical company and its warehouse.
There were more than two thousands of boxes of medical examination gloves discovered and seized by the taskforce. The Prosecutor subpoenaed the accused medical company’s director Hsieh, the company’s accountants, sales staff, supply managers, warehouse managers and warehouse workers (a total of 15 people) for further investigation as to where the illegal glove materials originally came from, where counterfeit stock was directed to and the detailed information about criminal book keeping.
After the first interrogation, the medical company’s director, Hsieh was bailed out at NTW $300,000. The further investigation is continuing and additional action may be forthcoming.