TAIPEI - A TAIWANESE tycoon who is appealing against an 18-year jail sentence imposed for his part in the island's biggest ever financial scandal was back behind bars on Wednesday, a court official said.

Gary Wang, the former chairman of Eastern Multimedia Group, was jailed in December and fined NT$700 million (S$31.3 million) after being convicted of breach of trust and violation of banking and securities exchange rules.

Wang was found guilty of embezzling funds from The Chinese Bank, a defunct subsidiary of the Rebar Group, one of the largest conglomerates on the island.

He has consistently denied any wrongdoing and appealed against the finding.

The 54-year-old had been granted bail in May last year after agreeing to pay a record NT$350 million.

The bail conditions stipulated that he should not leave the island and had to report to police every night and to the Taipei District Court once a week.

The same bail conditions remained in place when he lodged his appeal against his conviction in December.

However, when he arrived in court on Wednesday he was sent back to the Tucheng detention centre after allegedly breaching the terms of his bail.

'Information we gathered shows Mr. Wang has been attempting to smuggle himself out of Taiwan from Penghu,' an island in the Taiwan Strait, court spokesman Huang Chun-ming told reporters.

'Besides, he has assets abroad,' he said.

Wang is the founder of the Eastern Multimedia Group, which has interests in real estate, retail, media and telecommunications.

More than 100 people were indicted for involvement in the scandal and a total of eight Wang family members were convicted, with jail terms ranging from three-and-a-half years to 20 years.

Wang's father Wang You-theng, the founder of the Rebar Group conglomerate, and Wang You-theng's wife Chin Shih-ying fled to China in December 2006 and later to the United States before the group's financial troubles came to light.

Prosecutors had sought a 30-year jail term for Wang You-theng and a 28-year sentence for his wife, a US citizen.

The Rebar crisis became public in early January 2007 when two of its units filed for bankruptcy protection.

The move sparked a run on the then Rebar-owned The Chinese Bank, whose customers rushed to withdraw some NT$50 billion in just a few days despite the government's repeated appeals for calm.

The government took control of The Chinese Bank to stop it collapsing, before HSBC won a bid to acquire the bank in December 2007. -- AFP