© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A woman drives past the logo of Foxconn outside the company’s building in Taipei, Taiwan November 9, 2022. REUTERS/Ann Wang/File Photo
TAIPEI (Reuters) -Shares in Taiwan’s Foxconn, a major supplier of Apple (NASDAQ:)’s iPhones, dropped as much as 3% on Monday after a report that the company is the subject of tax audits and land use probes in China.
China’s state-backed the Global Times said some of Foxconn’s key subsidiaries in China were the subject of tax audits and that China’s natural resources department had also conducted on-site investigations on the land use of Foxconn enterprises in Henan and Hubei provinces and elsewhere.
Foxconn said in a statement on Sunday that legal compliance was a “fundamental principle” of its operations everywhere, and that it would “actively cooperate with the relevant units on the related work and operations”.
It declined further comment on Monday. Foxconn makes most iPhones at the Zhengzhou plant in Henan province where it employs about 200,000 people, though it has other smaller production sites in India and southern China.
The Global Times did not give details of the tax or land use probes, which have not been officially announced by any Chinese government department.
The report comes less than three months before Taiwan votes in presidential and parliamentary elections.
Foxconn’s billionaire founder Terry Gou, who no longer has a role in the company’s day to day operations and stepped down as company chief in 2019, is running as an independent candidate though he is at the bottom of polls.
He has accused Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party of taking the island to the brink of war with China by its hostile policies and that only he, with his extensive business and personal contacts in China and the United States, can maintain peace.