A high-ranking Ministry of Justice official said yesterday that Beijing has not been aggressive enough in helping to return Taiwanese fugitives who are hiding in China.
At a seminar being held in Taipei to mark the 20th anniversary of cross-strait academic exchanges in the field of law, Deputy Minister of Justice Wu Chen-huan (吳陳鐶) said Taiwan and China have been making great efforts to jointly crack down on cross-strait crime in line with an agreement they struck last April, mentioning successes such as the foiling of telephone and online fraud rings and allowing family members to visit prisoners on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.
However, while Taiwan has been quick to respond to China’s requests for judicial assistance, this has not been the case on the other side, probably because of China’s vast territory, he said.
Taiwan had also designated the Ministry of Justice as the sole agency to deal with cross-strait judicial cooperation, while in China this responsibility is spread out among the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Public Security, he said.
“Many of Taiwan’s requests are pushed around among the different departments for quite a long time and some eventually get rejected,” Wu said.
The deputy minister also raised the question as to why most of the Taiwanese fugitives arrested and repatriated by Chinese authorities are those wanted for crimes other than financial fraud.
The Chinese authorities have also been criticized for being reluctant to send back the scores of Taiwanese who have fled to escape penalties for economic crimes, including Chen You-hao (陳由豪), former chairman of the now defunct Tuntex Group.
Chen fled to China in 2001 leaving around NT$60 billion (US$1.9 billion) in unpaid bank loans.
Wu urged the Chinese scholars at the seminar to help prompt the relevant agencies to handle cross-strait cooperation in a more efficient way.
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