Authorities this week arrested 21 suspected gang bosses and hundreds of others with known ties to organized crime syndicates as part of a nationwide crackdown, including China Unification Promotion Party legislator-at-large candidate Lee Tsung-kuei (李宗奎), who was taken into custody on Thursday.
The pro-China party was founded by former Bamboo Union gang leader Chang An-le (張安樂), who is better known by his nickname White Wolf.
Lee, the party’s deputy chairman, was apprehended by Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) officers in Nantou County and charged with extortion, involvement in organized crime and other offenses.
Photo: Liu Ching-hou, Taipei Times
Despite Lee’s arrest, Chang and other party members held an election rally near the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday morning.
The party is running candidates in major city districts for the Jan. 16 legislative elections, despite speculation that Chang and the party are acting as fronts for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and might have received backing and financial support from CCP officials and Chinese business groups, which would be against the law.
Prosecutors are investigating allegations that Chang, Lee and other party members have used violence, extortion or other criminal activities to gain votes.
Police records and media reports show Chang and Lee were among the founding members of the Bamboo Union when it began in the late 1950s. The gang was mainly composed of men from Mainlander backgrounds and it reportedly had close ties to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration during the Martial Law era.
According to a bureau news release yesterday, law enforcement officials have raided more than 1,000 chapters of alleged crime syndicates and places frequented by gangsters.
Ten illegal firearms have been seized and 358 people taken into custody, including 21 major gangsters or “boss figures.”
CIB officials said Lee was arrested and charged with extortion and threats of violence in connection with at least three real-estate disputes.
Police said they believe Lee and his subordinates made at least NT$100 million (US$3.02 million) in illegal activities in the past few years.
The CIB said that Lee’s usual mode of operation was to muscle in on the construction of urban renewal projects involving old buildings, or try to gain control of land title deeds, either by blackmail and threats, with some victims being beaten up by Lee and his followers.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods