Food safety law amendment removes corporate criminal fines, leading to excessively light penalties in the Wei Chuan sales of Dachang Changji blended oil case
The Executive Yuan proposed to solve the Dato Oil blending scandal The Changhua County Health Bureau imposed a fine of 1.85 billion yuan, but because of the "no double punishment for one act" provision in the Administrative Penalty Act, the fine was revoked, and a proposal was made to delete Article 49, Paragraph 5 of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation regarding the criminal imposition of corporate fines. The Kuomintang caucus in the Legislative Yuan also held a press conference yesterday to support the Executive Yuan's amendment, stressing that only by deleting the provision in the Food Safety and Sanitation Act that imposes corporate fines can unscrupulous manufacturers be made to "be fined and feel the pain" through administrative fines.
However, if the provision imposing corporate fines is removed, the first impact will be on the case in which the Taipei District Prosecutors Office the day before yesterday indicted Wei Chuan Corp. and its representative Wei Ying-chun and others on suspicion of instructing subordinates to purchase inferior oil blended by Dato Changji with added copper chlorophyll and packaging it as 21 types of pure olive oil and blended oil for sale. In the indictment, the prosecutor asked the judge to consider Wei Chuan's criminal proceeds and impose the heaviest fine. If the judge finds after trial that Wei Chuan's offense is established, under the current Food Safety and Sanitation Act a maximum fine of 80 million yuan may be imposed, far higher than the 3 million yuan fine imposed by the health authorities.
However, if the Legislative Yuan ultimately deletes the provision in the Food Safety and Sanitation Act that imposes corporate fines, the Taipei District Prosecutors Office's request that the court impose the heaviest corporate fine on Wei Chuan will also become a dead letter. According to the content of the indictment, prosecutors calculated that Wei Chuan representative Wei Ying-chun and others were suspected of instructing subordinates to purchase inferior oil blended by Dato Changji with added copper chlorophyll and packaging it as 21 types of pure olive oil and blended oil for sale, with illegal profits reaching as high as 150 million yuan. The health authorities imposed only a 3 million yuan fine, which for Wei Chuan was merely a drop in the bucket.
Article 49, Paragraph 5 of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation provides that "where the representative of a legal person, or the agent, employee or other staff member of a legal person or natural person commits an offense under Paragraphs 1 to 3 in the course of performing business, in addition to punishing the actor, the legal person or natural person shall be fined not more than ten times the amount prescribed for each such paragraph." Because the Taipei District Prosecutors Office held that Wei Chuan's sale of Dato Changji copper chlorophyll blended oil violated Article 15, Paragraph 1, Subparagraph 7 of the Food Safety and Sanitation Act, "adulteration or counterfeiting," and Subparagraph 10, "adding additives not permitted by the central competent authority," it requested the court to impose the heaviest corporate fine on Wei Chuan under Article 49, Paragraph 5 of the same Act.
However, in order to resolve the fact that Dato Changji's blended oil case was subject to an administrative fine of 1.85 billion yuan, but because the Administrative Penalty Act provides for the principle of "no double punishment for one act" and "priority of criminal punishment," after the court sentenced a fine of 38 million yuan, the 1.85 billion yuan penalty was revoked, causing public uproar. Therefore, in this food safety amendment, the Ministry of Justice proposed that the Executive Yuan delete the provision in the Food Safety and Sanitation Act imposing corporate fines.
However, when this amendment was deliberated in the Legislative Yuan, it was questioned by the Judicial Yuan and opposition legislators. Judicial Yuan officials took a reserved attitude, holding that deleting corporate fines was equivalent to "decriminalizing legal persons."
Judicial Yuan officials held that criminal punishment has the basic structure of principal punishment and accessory punishment, with principal punishment determining guilt and imposing a fine, and accessory punishment then confiscating illegal proceeds. But the amendment drafted by the Executive Yuan deletes the provision in the principal punishment imposing corporate fines, and adds a new provision in Article 49-1, Paragraph 2, which is accessory in nature: "Where a legal person obtains property or property interests because its representative, agent, employee or other staff member commits an offense under this Act, such property or interests shall be confiscated unless they should be returned to the victim. If confiscation of all or part is impossible, the value shall be collected from the offender or compensated from the offender's property." This will create the doubt of confiscating the property of "one who has not been found guilty."
In addition, under the criminal law principle of "following the old and the lighter," even if the new Food Safety and Sanitation Act adds Article 49-1, Paragraph 2, allowing confiscation or collection of corporate criminal proceeds, it would not apply to the case of Wei Chuan using Dato Changji copper chlorophyll oil for blending and sale. Instead, Wei Chuan would escape criminal liability because of the deletion of corporate fines.
In order to solve the controversy arising from the Food Safety and Sanitation Act in the Dato Changji blended oil case over "no double punishment for one act" and "priority of criminal punishment," the law was amended to delete the provision imposing corporate fines, creating the new problem of "decriminalizing legal persons" and giving Wei Chuan a chance to escape criminal punishment for selling oil blended with Dato Changji copper chlorophyll. This kind of law amendment, treating the headache by treating the head and the foot pain by treating the foot, only adds to the confusion of an already tangled mess.