Ten Taiwanese who were involved in fraud-related crimes in China were extradited back to Taiwan via Kinmen County on Wednesday, four of whom are convicted fraudsters in Taiwan.
The 10 people arrived via a ferry operating between Xiamen and Kinmen, also known as the “small three links.”
The Kinmen County Prosecutors’ Office yesterday said that four of the 10 extradited people were convicted in Taiwan for committing fraud and contravening the Money Laundering Control Act (洗錢防制法), and were on the wanted list.
Photo: Wu Cheng-ting, Taipei Times
They were immediately arrested upon arrival and sent to Kinmen Prison to serve their sentences following brief questioning, the office said.
As for the other six, four were also on wanted lists published by other prosecutors’ offices in Taiwan, but have not been convicted, while the other two are not wanted criminals in Taiwan, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported.
The two who were not on the wanted list were released after signing a proof of arrival.
Two of the 10 people were reported to have served prison sentences in China, the report said.
The office has also asked the police and Kinmen Border Affairs Corps to investigate if the returned people were involved in other criminal activities in Taiwan.
China reportedly intended to extradite three other wanted criminals via the “small three links” yesterday afternoon, but the request was denied by immigration authorities on the grounds that their identities must first be verified.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said that China informed Taiwan about the extradition with shorter notice than usual, and that they were not able to board the ferry to Kinmen because none of them possessed proper legal documents to enter Taiwan.
“We only allowed the 10 individuals to board the ferry after we verified their identities and adopted precautionary safety measures,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a news conference in Taipei.
“In the past, the matter was handled with fixed channels of operation. However, I must say that the information came to us on relatively short notice,” Liang said.
Asked about the proper way to handle cross-strait extraditions, Liang said that the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement (兩岸共同打擊犯罪及司法互助協議) stipulates that both should agree in advance on when and how the criminals should be extradited.
However, this case was handled differently from what was stated in the agreement, which cannot be thoroughly enforced due to political barriers set up by China, Liang said.
“Nevertheless, these people are Taiwanese and are entitled to return to the country, and some of them are convicted criminals on the wanted list as well. We are dissatisfied with the way the information was relayed to us, but we still need to handle it using a practical approach,” he said.
“We still hope that China would respect the mechanisms that have been in place for a long time, as that is the best approach,” he added.
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