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Updated Friday, May 27, 2011 0:22 am TWN, The China Post news staff

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China plans to return 14 Taiwanese fraud suspects soon: official

The China Post news staff--The mainland China Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu (中共公安部部長孟建柱) said yesterday that Taiwanese suspects in an international telephone fraud case will be repatriated to Taiwan. During a meeting with the Taiwanese Ministry of the Interior National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chiun, Meng said the investigation regarding the 14 suspects had concluded.

Fourteen Taiwanese nationals were arrested by a China-Philippines anticrime task force last year in Manila on charges of cross-border fraud against Chinese nationals. Ten Chinese, suspected to be accomplices, were also arrested. The 14 Taiwanese were sent to China along with the Chinese suspects on Feb. 2 on charges of defrauding people in China of 140 million Yuan (US$21.23 million).

The incident triggered a diplomatic row between Taiwan and the Philippines, with Taiwan launching a series of protests over Manila's disregard of Taiwanese jurisdiction concerning the Taiwanese suspects.

On Feb. 5, the Chinese government expressed its willingness to communicate in a timely manner with the Taiwanese government regarding the follow-up of the case, according to the cross-strait agreement on joint crime-fighting and judicial assistance, and based on its hope to maintain the peaceful cross-strait relationship.

The Ministry of Justice sent official messages to the Chinese government on Feb. 8, asking to have the 14 suspects sent back to Taiwan as soon as possible, along with the investigation results and relevant files, promising that the suspects will receive heavy penalties while civil claims were to be filed for the Chinese victims.

While the Taiwanese suspects were in custody in China, the Chinese police sent officials to Taiwan to report on the case, and also invited Taiwanese police and prosecutors to Beijing four times to further understand the investigation process. Visits for the suspects' family members were also arranged.

According to Chiang Hui-ming, the administrative vice minister of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), it was inappropriate that this fraud case be rendered a sovereignty issue, as international cases that affect people of multiple nations had always been under cooperative jurisdiction, in which the nations of origin for the suspects and victims, and the nation where alleged crimes took place, all are allowed to exert control over the investigation.

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