The scheme of holding duty-free cigarette cartons waiting to be smuggled into the nation in an airline warehouse started with a 2016 state visit by former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), according to a report by China Airlines (CAL), parts of which became available over the weekend.
The practice of transferring duty-free cigarette cartons out of the airport after the return of a presidential flight was first arranged after Ma’s visit to Central American allies in March of that year, the report said.
National Security Bureau (NSB) personnel and airline crews allegedly developed a practice four years ago known as “goods delivery when unloading an aircraft,” the report said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) ordered the airline to conduct an internal investigation and submit its report by the end of last week.
Prosecutors have withheld the release of much of the report because of their ongoing investigation.
The airline has told its top executive and the manager in charge of Ma’s 2016 presidential flight they would be questioned to verify the circumstances of that flight, CAL officials said yesterday.
Ma’s office yesterday called for a full investigation into the smuggling scandal.
“Since the public wants to know the truth of what took place, we hope the government can conduct a thorough investigation to give the public a full accounting of the case,” it said in a statement.
Preliminary reports suggest that preordered cigarettes and other duty-free goods in excess of the legal limit submitted by people in the official delegations on chartered presidential flights date back to 2006 during then-president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) second term in office, but CAL’s internal data suggested that such purchases were made on the aircraft and the items were not waiting in the airline’s warehouse.
Ma’s 2016 trip was the first time that NSB personnel colluded with CAL managers to store more than 1,000 cartons of duty-free cigarette in an airline warehouse, with instructions that they be transported on NSB trucks that joined the presidential motorcade as it left the airport after the delegation’s arrival home, bypassing regular security checks and customs clearance, investigators said.
Such a practice is illegal, the ministry said.
In addition, the excess amount of cigarette cartons were never carried on the plane, but left the airline’s warehouse, contravening regulations on duty-free cigarettes and alcohol, it said.
The airline’s report, which tallied data from 2006, showed that more than 40,000 cartons of duty-free cigarettes had been preordered by 26 officials taking part in presidential visits over the past 14 years.
Further investigation is needed, the ministry said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not