Taipei prosecutors have indicted 15 people, including the chairman of Taipei Show Chwan Hospital, for allegedly colluding with travel agencies to help Chinese enter Taiwan to illegally work or travel under the guise of entering the nation to receive high-end health checks.
The case first came to light when immigration officials in Tainan found, while interrogating undocumented Chinese women working in the city as sex workers, that several of them had originally entered Taiwan to undergo health checks.
The officials referred the case to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, which filed a first round of charges against seven suspects last year.
Photo: Chien Li-chung, Taipei Times
In a new round of indictments issued on Tuesday, the prosecutors’ office said that China has prohibited its citizens from traveling to Taiwan independently since August 2019 and has also complicated the process for coming to the nation on group tours. As a result, one of the easiest ways for Chinese to receive permission to come to Taiwan is by arranging to do so for a medical check.
Under Taiwanese law, the minimum amount Chinese nationals must spend if they want to come to Taiwan for a health check is NT$20,000 (US$647), if they undergo the check at a hospital, or NT$15,000, if they undergo it at a smaller-scale facility such as a clinic.
After submitting their payment along with their application, the National Immigration Agency grants them approval to enter Taiwan for up to 15 days, the prosecutors’ office said.
In the case in question, the suspects — including Taipei Show Chwan Hospital chairman Chen Chung-hsiung (陳忠雄) and a contractor who managed Cardinal Tien Hospital’s health examination center, also surnamed Chen (陳) — allegedly conspired with travel agencies to issue fake receipts for health checkups, while splitting between them the payments made by would-be travelers from China.
Chen Chung-hsiung and others at Taipei Show Chwan Hospital are suspected of helping 68,487 Chinese enter Taiwan on false pretenses between 2015 and 2020, while Chen and others at Cardinal Tien Hospital helped 1,228 Chinese enter the nation, prosecutors said.
The indictment did not state how much the suspects allegedly earned from the scheme, but the suspects charged in the case in November last year — including executives at Taipei’s Chung Shan Hospital and several travel agencies — were accused of earning NT$17.85 million in illicit profits in return for helping 24,600 Chinese enter the nation.
The defendants were charged with contravening 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) and forgery under the Criminal Code.
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