Two tried in China as melamine makers
Published 9:52 pm Thursday, December 25, 2008
BEIJING — Two Chinese went on trial today accused of making and selling the chemical at the center of a tainted milk scandal blamed for killing six children and sickening nearly 300,000 others.
Police say Zhang Yujun and Zhang Yanzhang illegally manufactured and sold a “protein powder” composed mainly of melamine and malt dextrin, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The powder was added to raw milk to make it appear high in protein content.
An official at the publicity office of Hebei supreme court confirmed that the trial started today at the Shijiazhuang Intermediate People’s Court.
Sanlu Group Co., the main company in the scandal, is based in Shijiazhuang. The company confirmed earlier this week that it was bankrupt.
Police say they found an illegal workshop run by the two Zhangs on the outskirts of Jinan in Shandong province in eastern China, according to Xinhua. Police say it made 600 tons of the fake protein powder from September 2007 to October 2008 and was the largest source of melamine in the country.
Xinhua reported Thursday that Sanlu has 1.1 $160 million of net debt and that a branch of the Shijiazhuang City Commercial Bank was the creditor that applied to a court to have Sanlu declared bankrupt.
It said the intermediate court in Shijiazhuang had accepted the filing. Xinhua said Sanlu owes a creditor $132 million it borrowed earlier this month to pay for the medical treatment of children sickened after drinking the company’s infant formula, and for compensation of the babies’ families.
Wang Jianguo, spokesman for the Shijiazhuang city government, said the money was given to the Dairy Association of China for medical care and compensation fees for victims, according to a transcript of a news conference he gave Thursday.
The issue of compensation for the families of the children sickened or killed has become a sensitive one, with courts so far not accepting any lawsuits filed by the families.
The Legal Daily newspaper reported that Tian Wenhua, Sanlu’s chairwoman and general manager, would go on trial Wednesday in Shijiazhuang for “selling fake and shoddy products.”
Sanlu, like a number of major Chinese dairies, had been exempt from government inspections because it was deemed to have superior quality controls — until high levels of the industrial chemical melamine were found in its baby formula and other products in September. Several other dairies were also found to have sold tainted goods.
Melamine poses little danger in small amounts but larger doses can cause kidney stones and renal failure.
