Former Taiwanese National Academy Head Cleared of Corruption

Wong Chi-huey, who was the president of Academia Sinica until 2016, was found not guilty of taking bribes from a pharmaceutical company.

Written byAshley Yeager

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Biochemist Wong Chi-huey, the former president of Academia Sinica, the national academy in Taiwan, was cleared of corruption charges by the Shilin District Court last Friday (December 28).

“Despite that justice has been served, it does not recover (my) reputation,” Wong says in an article by Central News Agency, the government of the Republic of China’s state-owned news outlet, posted on Taiwan News.

The corruption investigation began in 2016 when the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office started to look more closely at shares of a startup biotech company called OBI Pharma that Wong received from Michael Chang, the company’s chairman. Allegedly, the shares were given to Wong in exchange for him helping OBI obtain access to information from Academia Sinica on enzyme synthesis techniques. Wong and Chang were indicted a year ago under the Anti-Corruption Act and have now both been cleared of ...

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Meet the Author

Ashley Yeager
Ashley started at The Scientist in 2018. Before joining the staff, she worked as a freelance editor and writer, a writer at the Simons Foundation, and a web producer at Science News, among other positions. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT. Ashley edits the Scientist to Watch and Profile sections of the magazine and writes news, features, and other stories for both online and print.
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