China is no longer a haven for Taiwan’s fugitives after Taiwan and China signed an agreement to combat crime in April 2009, according to one prosecutor.
Kao Feng-chi (高峰祈), who was in charge of repatriating criminals from China for the Ministry of Justice’s Prosecution Office, said Taiwan has requested that China repatriate more than 200 criminals since the agreement was enacted in June 2009, with more than 100 criminals having been returned so far.
He said the ministry’s Investigation Bureau (MJIB) and the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) were both seeking fugitives in China. The bureaus’ methods include tracing the fugitives’ whereabouts by monitoring the telephones of their families and close friends. Once the investigators know where a fugitive is, they tell the ministry and the ministry notifies its counterpart in China to request an arrest.
China’s judicial authorities won’t track down Taiwanese fugitives; they want Taiwan to provide precise information about a fugitive’s whereabouts before they agree to take action, Kao said.
Citing former lawmaker Kuo Ting-tsai (郭廷才) as an example, Kao said Kuo was traced by CIB officers through telephone conversations with his son in Taiwan. The 74-year-old Kuo was arrested in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, and repatriated in November to serve a sentence term for corruption stemming from his tenure as Pingtung County Council speaker, Kao said. Kuo had been on Taiwan’s most-wanted list since he fled the country in February 2005.
Former Taiwan High Court judge Chang Ping-lung (張炳龍) was also repatriated from China in November to serve his prison term for corruption, after three years and eight months on the run.
Chang fled to China in March 2007. He had been hiding in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, but moved to a small city in Sichuan Province in the middle of last year after he was alerted he was being traced, Kao said. Investigators were able to track the former judge by monitoring his wife in Taiwan and a girlfriend in China, he said.
Former Changhua County council speaker Pai Hung-shen (白鴻森), who fled to China in late 2009, was repatriated in May last year to serve his sentence for corruption.
Because white-collar criminals such as Kuo and Chang cultivate good relations with local authorities in China, local governments had delayed arresting them or providing information about their whereabouts, he said.
The ministry had to contact Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security, which then formed a task force to make the arrests, he said.
To avoid the problem of “influential criminals” bribing local officials to avoid arrest, the justice ministry prefers to deal directly with authorities in Beijing, Kao said, although it has still been unable to repatriate tycoons such as former Tuntex Group chairman Chen Yu-hao (陳由豪), former An Feng Group president Chu An-hsiung (朱安雄), former Kuangsan Enterprise Group president Tseng Cheng-jen (曾正仁), former legislative speaker Liu Sung-fan (劉松藩) and a former Lee and Li Attorneys-at-Law employee Eddie Liu (劉偉杰), who has been accused of embezzling a huge amount from the firm.
Chu and Eddie Liu have been difficult to trace because they cut off almost all contract with people in Taiwan, Kao said.
Chen Yu-hao and Liu Sung-fan are believed have become “honored guests” of Chinese officials because they are wealthy or have substantial business interests in China and are free to travel in China or to the US, Kao said.
News reports have said that former Chung Shing Bank chairman Wang Yu-yun (王玉雲) died in China, but his name remains on the most-wanted list because the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office has yet to confirm his death, Kao said.
Chang Hsueh-ming (張學明), a senior prosecutor at the Kaohsiung branch of the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors’ Office, said many convicted criminals or people under investigation have gone to China since the ban on traveling to China was lifted in the late 1980s and so the number of Taiwanese criminals hiding out in China rose steadily in the 1990s and 2000s.
During that time, China repatriated just a few Taiwanese, and none on the most-wanted list, Chang said, creating a security dilemma in Taiwan.
Criminals seeking to flee the country have begun to look toward the Philippines. A Kaohsiung Harbor police officer surnamed Yeh (葉) said harbor police and the coast guard have stopped several criminals fleeing to the Philippines.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
AMENDMENT: Contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau must be reported, and failure to comply could result in a prison sentence, the proposal stated The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday voted against a proposed bill by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers that would require elected officials to seek approval before visiting China. DPP Legislator Puma Shen’s (沈伯洋) proposed amendments to the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), stipulate that contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau should be reported, while failure to comply would be punishable by prison sentences of up to three years, alongside a fine of NT$10 million (US$309,041). Fifty-six voted with the TPP in opposition
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai