Ten people have been indicted and are being detained for allegedly smuggling cannabis into Taiwan from a tanker vessel, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday.
The suspects allegedly smuggled cannabis off southwestern Taiwan in December last year and have been detained with the approval of a local court, the office said in a statement.
The prosecutors said they had been investigating and monitoring suspicious activities for three months before directing the Coast Guard Administration to board a Tainan-registered commercial raft in waters off the northwestern coast of Kaohsiung on Dec. 10.
Photo: Wu Cheng-feng, Taipei Times
Coast guards seized four packages of cannabis weighing 221.7kg, the statement said.
The next day, unoccupied lifeboats with tow ropes were found floating in the same waters carrying 20 similar bags of cannabis weighing 1,159.3kg, it said.
Prosecutors determined that a foreign oil tanker in waters to the southwest was at the center of the drug trafficking activities, and dispatched the coast guard to intercept, board and inspect the vessel, it said.
Three Taiwanese and seven Burmese crew members were taken into custody on suspicion of drug trafficking, it said.
Prosecutors said the suspects had brought the cannabis to waters off the southwestern coast where they waited for instructions to toss the packages overboard.
They then retrieved the packages with rafts to smuggle them into Taiwan, the statement said.
The seized cannabis had a market value of more than NT$3.5 billion (US$107.77 million), the statement said.
In other news, the Yunlin District Prosecutors’ Office on Tuesday indicted a former National Communications Commission (NCC) member in connection with his work for a telecom accused of fraud.
Hsiao Chi-hung (蕭祈宏), who left the NCC in 2022, was indicted for contravening revolving door prohibitions in the Public Functionary Service Act (公務員服務法) by working as a consultant for Tel25 Corp, the office said.
Hsiao was previously questioned and released on NT$500,000 bail after prosecutors indicted Tel25’s owner, surnamed Chen (陳), and 21 others in January on charges including money laundering and aggravated fraud.
Prosecutors allege that Tel25 used its business activities as a cover to collect personal data on Taiwanese and foreign nationals to use in false know-your-customer authorizations.
It then used that information to sell prepaid SIM cards with international roaming and Internet services — which are favored by fraud rings because they are difficult to track — earning more than NT$600 million in illegal profits over three years, prosecutors said.
The NCC said in a news release that it was “shocked and disappointed” by the accusations against Hsiao, but would cooperate fully with prosecutors.
To help combat fraud, the commission said it has worked with telecoms to block 8.24 million text messages, 18.84 million international calls to Taiwan and disconnected 1,566 telephone numbers between March last year and February.
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