Chinese authorities have detained four employees of Taiwanese Apple supplier Foxconn under "quite strange" circumstances. Police in Zhengzhou city of Henan province held the factory workers on an offence equivalent to Taiwan ’s “crime of breach of trust”, the island’s mainland affairs council said.

Four employees of the Taiwanese contract manufacturer that makes the Apple iPhone are in detention in China, Taiwanese authorities said Friday.

Taiwan’s government said that they had been accused of a breach of trust, but that their employer, Foxconn, had denied the company suffered any losses.