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1st Ld-Writethru: Chinese telecom fraud suspects repatriated from Kenya

Xinhua, April 13, 2016 Adjust font size:

Kenyan police are deporting 77 Chinese telecom fraud suspects, including 45 from Taiwan, to the Chinese mainland.

The first 10 people were repatriated on Saturday and the remaining 67 on Wednesday, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has confirmed. It is the first time that China has repatriated such a large group of telecom fraud suspects from Africa.

In recent years, syndicates led by suspects from Taiwan and based in Southeast Asia, Africa and Oceania have been falsely presenting themselves as law enforcement officers to extort money from people on the Chinese mainland through telephone calls, according to Chinese police.

In one case cited by the MPS in a statement, a person surnamed Yang from Duyun City of Guizhou Province was cheated by a syndicate, led by a Taiwan suspect, of 117 million yuan (18.1 million U.S. dollars) in December 2015.

Victims in other cases included migrant workers, teachers, students and elderly people from the Chinese mainland, and some of them committed suicide under the pressure of their economic losses, according to the statement.

The MPS said judicial organs on the Chinese mainland have legal rights of jurisdiction over the repatriated suspects.

Mainland police will investigate Taiwan suspects in strict accordance with the law and keep Taiwan authorities informed, the statement added.

The 77 suspects are from two telecom fraud syndicates. On Nov. 29, of 2014, Kenyan police arrested 48 people from the Chinese mainland and 28 from Taiwan over telecom scams. On April 8 of 2016, 19 suspects from the mainland and 22 from Taiwan were apprehended on similar charges.

In the past few years, police from the mainland and Taiwan have arrested more than 7,700 suspects, about 4,600 of them from Taiwan, in 47 joint operations to fight telecom frauds based in Southeast Asia.

However, in many of the cases handled by Taiwan judicial organs, Taiwan suspects were not brought to justice and victims on the mainland were unable to retrieve their lost money, An Fengshan, spokesperson for the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, told a news conference on Wednesday.

Quite a few Taiwan suspects were released as soon as they were returned to Taiwan and some resumed their wrongdoing soon after, An said.

"They have caused a tremendous loss to people on the Chinese mainland... triggering strong discontent," according to the spokesperson.

An said the office's director Zhang Zhijun informed Taiwan's mainland affairs chief Andrew Hsia about the repatriation on Tuesday.

The legal rights and interests of the repatriated Taiwan suspects will be guaranteed in accordance with the law, he said.

"Judicial departments from Taiwan are welcome to visit the mainland to explore ways of strengthening cooperation between the two sides in cracking down on such international telecom fraud," said the MPS. Endi