Court jails 85 for phone scams

44 Taiwanese among those guilty of telecoms fraud involving Chinese nationals

BEIJING: A Beijing court has convicted 85 people, including 44 from Taiwan, of running phone scams in Kenya and Indonesia that targeted Chinese people. Two Taiwanese were sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court issued the 15-year sentences for fraud to Taiwanese nationals Zhang Kaimin and Lin Jinde.

The other 83 defendants were sentenced to up to 14 years in prison and fined.

Scores of Taiwanese have been arrested around the world over the past two years in connection with telecoms fraud scams targeting Chinese nationals.

Countries including Malaysia, Cambodia and Kenya have deported Taiwanese suspects to China in deference to Beijing, which views Taiwan as its own territory without sovereign legal status. Taiwan rejects China’s claim to its territory and wants its citizens returned there.

According to the rulings handed down yesterday and posted on the court’s website, the defendants participated in phone scams in Indonesia and Kenya targeting mainland Chinese.

China has defended the deportations, saying the crimes were committed against people in China.

Chinese authorities have sought to contain an explosion of telecom crime it says has led to huge financial losses.

The fraud has spread overseas, with Chinese speakers recruited in neighbouring Taiwan increasingly setting up operations in East Africa or South-East Asia.

The scams involved the offenders impersonating officials at police bureaus and other government agencies in phone calls to mainland residents.

They tricked their victims into transferring money to certain bank accounts, defrauding a total of 185 people of more than 29mil yuan (RM18mil), the court said.

Taiwan’s China policy-making Mainland Affairs Council said the outside world could only believe justice had been done if the case had fully considered all the evidence and gone through proper legal procedure.

“In this case, we obtained intelligence on the criminal suspects behind the scenes,” it said.

“We again call on mainland China to cooperate with our public security organs to investigate the origins and not allow the masterminds behind the scenes to get away with it.”

Last year, Kenya deported dozens of people to China, including five Taiwanese in August after they were acquitted in the African country’s courts of wire fraud charges.

In April of last year, 45 other Taiwanese nationals arrested on similar charges were draped in black hoods and deported by Kenya to China after their acquittal, according to Amnesty International.

Most were deported because they didn’t have proper documentation to stay in Kenya. — Agencies

We again call on mainland China to cooperate with our public security organs to investigate the origins. Mainland Affairs Council