Authorities on Tuesday announced the arrest of four members of a group alleged to have smuggled chemicals from China that were to be used to produce ketamine.
The four were under surveillance, including having their phones wiretapped, for more than a year as the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) investigated the case in collaboration with the Customs Administration and the Coast Guard Administration, Yilan District Prosecutors’ Office head prosecutor Hsueh Chih-ho (薛植和) said.
“A search of a container at Keelung Port netted 70kg of hydroxylimine hydrochloride, which can be used to produce about 40kg of ketamine,” Hsueh said. “We estimate its total street value at about NT$45.5 million [US$1.51 million].”
The hydroxylimine hydrochloride was in pouches in 10 boxes of water filtration equipment in a shipping container, he said.
Authorities were tipped off about the container ship destined for Keelung Port from China and the interdiction was made in the first week of this month, after which law enforcement officers located and apprehended the four, Hsueh said.
The four male suspects are surnamed Su (蘇), 57; Feng (馮), 49; Chen (陳), 46; and Huang (黃), 35; a police statement said.
The four men had previously smuggled illegal drug-producing materials into other ports, including in Kaohsiung and Pingtung County, where the men are alleged to have drug-producing facilities, Hsueh said.
“We praise all the judiciary officials and law enforcement agencies involved in the case, which resulted in the successful interdiction of smuggled illegal materials for producing drugs,” he said. “If the ketamine went through final production yielding 40kg of narcotics, it would have put an estimated 1.2 million units of the drug in the hands of users, which would have resulted in grave damage to our society and endangered public security.”
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