Top Biz News

$73,000 reward for deadly 'foul play' details

By Qiu Quanlin (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-27 07:56

A division of a Taiwan-based company has announced a reward of 500,000 yuan ($73,000) for information about any "foul play" linked to the mysterious death of a worker in its factory in Shenzhen last week.

Ma Xiangqian, who started working at the Shenzhen plant of Foxconn Technology Group, a division of Taiwan electronics giant Hon Hai, last November, was found lying dead near the stairway of the factory's dormitory in the city's Guanlan township on Jan 23. He was 19.

A legal medical examination was conducted yesterday to investigate any "foul play", after Ma's relatives said they found scars on his body, indicating he might have been tortured.

However, police authorities did not reveal the results of the medical examination as further investigation is ongoing, said Liu Kun, press manager of the company, which has more than 700,000 employees worldwide.

Doctors from a hospital near the factory confirmed Ma was found dead at the scene and an initial police investigation suggested he died of natural causes.

"We invited Ma's family members and police officers to the funeral home for the legal medical examination," Liu told China Daily on the telephone.

"We understand that Ma's family wants to find the real cause behind his death. We are cooperating closely with police authorities and have announced a reward of 500,000 yuan to anyone who can prove there was foul play," said Li Jinming, the company's administrative general manager.

Ma's sister Ma Hui said her brother had been picked on for damaging company equipment and was later assigned to clean toilets, the Guangzhou Daily reported yesterday.

"There is more to my brother's death than meets the eye. For 19 years, my brother had not developed any unusual physical symptoms," she said.

Sources in the company said Ma had been absent from work from Jan 20. News of his death was first reported on tianya.com on Monday, and several netizens questioned the police investigation.

All efforts to contact the Shenzhen public security bureau failed yesterday.

Another employee in Foxconn's Shenzhen factory, Sun Danyong, committed suicide on July 16 last year during an investigation into the loss of a prototype of Apple's iPhone.

The company paid 360,000 yuan in compensation to Sun's parents and 30,000 yuan annually to support the family.

In another similar case, Zhang Ping, a migrant worker at a tableware factory in Longgang district of Shenzhen was found dead at his rented apartment just 19 days after he joined the company, the southcn.com reported yesterday.

According to the company's work report, Zhang had put in an extra 50 hours of work between Jan 5 and Jan 23.

Zhang's relatives have asked the company for 500,000 yuan in compensation, claiming the extra workload caused his death.