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Ex-BOI clerk indicted for role in prostitution ring

A former clerk with the Bureau of Immigration (now the National Immigration Agency) was indicted on Tuesday on charges of colluding with "snakeheads" in smuggling Chinese prostitutes into Taiwan in exchange for cash rewards.

The Taipei Prosecutor's Office charged Lee Juo-ling (李若玲) with corruption and violations of the statute governing civilian exchanges across the Taiwan Strait on suspicion that she had offered tips to a human trafficking ring to facilitate the entry of Chinese women to work as prostitutes.

Meanwhile, 145 other suspects -- including tour operators, the human trafficking ring mastermind, Chinese women and their local bogus marriage partners -- were also indicted on charges of fraud and of violating the Statute Governing the Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例).

The indictment document said that Lee, a former member of a liaison task force with the Legislative Yuan, was very familiar with the processing procedures for Chinese women's entry permit applications because of her long years of service at the immigration office.

Lee is suspected of having told the human trafficking ring led by Chung Ju-chi (鍾儒智) to have Chinese women fake pregnancy to get early entry interviews. She was also accused of having repeatedly asked her immigration colleagues to speed up processing of their entry applications under the false claim that certain lawmakers had requested it.

Under the scheme, the indictment said, 82 Chinese women had managed to enter Taiwan via marriages of convenience, among whom 34 had received direct assistance from Lee.

The Chinese women tended to pose as brides of Taiwanese men before turning to prostitution, the indictment said.

For each case, Lee is believed to have received from NT$30,000 (US$910) to NT$80,000 and is believed to have raked in NT$2.04 million in bribes, while the human trafficking ring made about NT$6.8 million in total.

Lee was fired by the immigration office late last October after she was taken into custody pending an investigation. Chung and two accomplices were also held incommunicado to prevent them from coordinating their stories.
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