A group of 100 Taiwanese suspected of fraud will be flown home from Indonesia today in a second round of repatriations following a massive cross-border criminal crackdown, the Criminal Investigation Bureau said yesterday.
The 100 suspects, who were rounded up in Indonesia during the past three months in a massive six-country operation against telecommunications and Internet scams, will be repatriated on a China Airlines chartered plane, the bureau said.
On Saturday, a group of 122 Taiwanese fraud suspects was returned to Taipei from Macau on a private EVA Airways flight.
This second group of suspects was arrested in Cambodia in a joint regional crime-fighting operation, code named “0310,” in which a total of 598 suspects, including 410 Taiwanese and 181 Chinese nationals, were arrested.
Saturday’s repatriations marked the first time in Taiwan’s crime-fighting history that a chartered plane was used to transport suspected criminals.
The bureau sent 60 detectives to escort the 122 suspects from Macau. After the suspects arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Saturday, another 40 police officers were dispatched to escort them to Greater Taichung for questioning.
In the “0310” operation, launched on March 10, Taiwanese and Chinese suspects who allegedly used “call centers” to exploit their compatriots were tracked and arrested.
The fraud rings were originally based in coastal cities in Taiwan and China, but they moved their operations to Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia after law enforcement authorities from both sides of the Taiwan Strait strengthened their efforts during the past two years to track them down.
Taiwan mobilized more than 800 police officers to join the regional crackdown on the scams.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS