Two Taiwanese nationals were arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle 7 tonnes of Philippine one-peso coins to China for their nickel content, the National Bureau of Investigation said yesterday.
This was the latest in a series of attempts to smuggle coins out of the country so that they could be melted down for their metal, officials said.
The suspects, identified by the last names Lin and Hsin, were arrested during two raids over the weekend in Manila, bureau regional chief Ruel Lasala said.
PHOTO: AFP
About a million flattened coins were seized in the raids, Lasala said.
The two suspects face charges of mutilating Philippine currency, but Lasala said that the investigations were continuing to see if they could be charged with more serious crimes.
The bureau had information that the two Taiwanese individuals may have already smuggled out some 45 tonnes of flattened one-peso coins to China, Lasala added.
The suspects had apparently resorted to flattening the coins so that they could be shipped out of the country as ordinary base metals.
The Customs Bureau seized three shipments consisting of millions of one-peso coins from February to July, the investigation bureau official said.
Lasala said that it was not known whether the two suspects had been involved in the previous attempts to smuggle out coins.
The rising price of nickel has made the metal content of the one-peso coin worth more than its face value, which is about US$0.02.
According to local media reports, the coins are sold in China for US$20 per kilogram.
In an effort to cut down smuggling, the Philippine Central Bank is now minting one-peso coins using a cheaper alloy.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater