Skip to main content

China jails 13 Taiwanese for telecoms fraud

In a brief statement, the Beijing court said that the 33 were given jail terms ranging from two years to 15 years and had also been given unspecified fines. It did not give specific details of the sentences for the 13 people from Taiwan


A court in Beijing on Thursday handed down sentences of up to 15 years in jail to 33 people for telecoms fraud, including 13 from Taiwan who had been deported from Kenya, a case that infuriated Taiwan.
Over the past two years countries including Kenya, Spain, Vietnam and Cambodia have deported hundreds of people from Taiwan to China for telecoms fraud, sparking accusations from Taipei that Beijing was effectively kidnapping its citizens.
China has defended the deportations, saying the crimes were committed against people in China and that as Taiwan is a part of China it was natural foreign governments should send these people to China rather than Taiwan.
In a brief statement, the Beijing court said that the 33 were given jail terms ranging from two years to 15 years and had also been given unspecified fines. It did not give specific details of the sentences for the 13 people from Taiwan.
On at least two occasions last year, Kenya deported groups of Taiwanese to China. In one case, a Kenyan magistrate said the Taiwanese should be repatriated to their place of origin, Taiwan, but the Kenyan government sent them to China. Kenya, like most countries, only has diplomatic relations with China.
Beijing considers self-ruled and democratic Taiwan a wayward province, ineligible for formal ties with other nations. Chinese authorities have sought to contain an explosion of telecom crime it says has led to huge financial losses, with callers often impersonating officials or authority figures and preying on the elderly, students or the unemployed. The fraud has spread overseas, with Chinese speakers recruited in neighbouring Taiwan increasingly setting up operations in East Africa or Southeast Asia.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Meryl Streep wants to trademark her own name

Meryl Streep has won three Oscars, three Emmys and six Golden Globes during her 40-year long career on stage, screen and television. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP, File) Meryl Streep, the most celebrated actress of her generation, has filed an application to trademark her name. The application was filed with US Patent and Trademark Office on January 22, records show. It requests that the name Meryl Streep be trademarked for “entertainment services,” movie appearances, speaking engagements and autographs. Streep, 68, last week extended her record to 21 Academy Award nominations, this time for her role in “The Post.” She has won three Oscars, three Emmys and six Golden Globes during her 40-year long career on stage, screen and television. It is not clear why Streep would file a trademark application at this stage in her career and her attorney and publicist did not return a request for comment on Monday. Many celebrities trademark their names or catch phrases to pro...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beijing’s struggle against pollution will be tough, take time: Mayor

Beijing’s battle against air pollution will take time and be very tough to win despite recent improvements, the acting mayor of China’s capital said on Wednesday. The city has been fighting to clean its notoriously smoggy air through steps such as pushing households and factories to switch away from coal to cleaner fuels like natural gas. “Further improvement in air quality (will be) extremely difficult,” acting mayor of Beijing, Chen Jining, said in a statement released during the city’s congress meeting. The central government’s intense focus on air quality means many local officials’ careers are linked to the success of efforts to tackle smog, making it unusual to speak candidly about the challenges of meeting tough targets. Beijing has chalked up a short-term success by cutting the annual average level of breathable particulate matter (PM 2.5) to 58 micrograms per cubic metre in 2017, beating a target set by the State Council in 2012. However, the city is still some way f...
Post a Comment
Read more

Under fire, Steve Bannon backs off explosive comments about Donald Trump’s son

Bannon, ousted from the White House in August, was quoted in “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by journalist Michael Wolff, as saying a June 2016 meeting with a group of Russians attended by Donald Trump Jr. and his father’s top campaign officials was “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” (Photo: Reuters) President Donald Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon on Sunday backed away from derogatory comments ascribed to him about Trump’s son in a new book that sparked White House outrage and could threaten Bannon’s influence as a would-be conservative power broker. Bannon, ousted from the White House in August, was quoted in “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by journalist Michael Wolff, as saying a June 2016 meeting with a group of Russians attended by Donald Trump Jr. and his father’s top campaign officials was “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” The president responded by saying Bannon had lost his mind, and the White House suggested the hard-right news site...
Post a Comment
Read more