6. ACHIEVEMENT AND EXISTING PROBLEMS
6.2 Achievement of Mutual Legal Assistance
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are regulations about delivery of documents, investigation and evidence collection, etc.
Those problems could be significantly reduced.
Police detected the He Fu-Ren fraud group in Pingtung County in May of this year. The criminal group usually impersonated mainland China police or prosecutors, and made phone calls from Taiwan to mainland residents. After being arrested, the suspects admitted that they found that Taiwan police could not easily trace the victims on the other side of Taiwan Strait, so the mainland residents became their prey. In this case Taiwan police has asked the Public Security of the PRC to investigate dummy accounts and victims on the basis of the "Nanjing Agreement". Taiwan police will obtain relevant information soon.94
6.2 Achievement of Mutual Legal Assistance
According to MAC statistics, since June 25, 2009, from the day the "Nanjing Agreement" took effect, to the end of February, 2010, the two sides have carried out more than 5,000 requests for mutual legal assistance, including repatriation on both sides, intelligence exchange, investigation and evidence collection, transfer of criminals, major information communication, business communication, delivery of litigation documents, etc.95, far exceeding the “Agreement on Mutual Legal
Assistance in Criminal Matters between USA and Taiwan”, which has only 73 cases over 7 years. When the counselor of Ministry of Justice, Chen Wen-Qi, was
interviewed on Radio Taiwan International on May 21, 2010, he pointed out that the cross-Strait mutual legal assistance has more than 7,000 cases so far.96The statistics
94 Available at: http://tw.news.yahoo.com/article/url/d/a/100522/78/263u5.html. Date of logging on:
06/08/2010.
95 Available at: http://www.mac.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=75517&ctNode=6409&mp=1. Date of logging on: 04/03/2011.
96 Available at:
http://www.rti.org.tw/radio/Program/Program_DispatchContent.aspx?ProgID=294&DispatchID
=26932. Date of logging on: 04/03/2011.
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prove the rapid progress of cross-Strait mutual legal assistance.97 The eye-catching cases can be stated separately as follows:
1. Repatriation of criminals
As mentioned earlier, from 1990 to May 31, 2008, a period of about 19 years, 168 wanted suspects and criminals were sent back from mainland China to Taiwan on the basis of the "Kinmen Agreement". In comparison, the Ministry of Justice pointed out that from June 25, 2009, the day the “Nanjing Agreement” took effect, to the end of May, 2010, there have been 35 wanted criminals repatriated back to Taiwan within only 11 months, including people suspected of being involved in fraud, kidnapping, narcotics, and other crimes. Compared with the figure in the past, the “Nanjing Agreement” has significantly improved the effectiveness of cross-Strait repatriation.98
Hsu Yang-Rong, who fled to the mainland after committing murder in Kaohsiung in March, 2009, and was repatriated in June by the mainland, can be described as one of the important indicators. In the past, repatriated people from mainland China to Taiwan were mostly those who entered China illegally, or violated the law in China and then were repatriated after serving their sentences on the mainland. Otherwise, the repatriated people would still be on the most-wanted lists of Taiwan. In this case, Hsu Yang-Rong flew to China after the incident, and during his time in China he did not violate the law. What’s more, Taiwan judicial institutions had not yet officially put Hsu on the wanted list, meaning that in accordance with established practice, Hsu was not classified as one who should be repatriated by the mainland. Before the signing of the"Nanjing Agreement", the mainland would not take the initiative to conduct
investigations of this kind of case, and the mainland had no obligation to arrest or
97 Available at: http://dailynews.sina.com/bg/tw/twlocal/cna/20091218/2354974790.html. Date of logging on: 04/03/2011.
98 Available at: http://tw.news.yahoo.com/article/url/d/a/100528/78/26fyv.html. Date of logging on:
06/09/2010.
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return Hsu. But in this case the mainland quickly and immediately arrested Hsu and repatriated him to Taiwan. It can prove that the "Nanjing Agreement" makes a substantial contribution to cross-Strait repatriation.99
Furthermore, after the "Nanjing Agreement", the sites of repatriation are no longer limited to Matsu to Mawei or Kinmen to Xiamen. On May 28,2009, the mainland repatriated Liu Kai-Qi, the former trustee of Hua-Xiang Technology Co.
Ltd., from directly from Shanghai to Taoyuan.100Another wanted suspect of drug crimes and robbery, Lin Tai-I, was also repatriated from Changsha, Hunan, to Taiwan.101 From these cases, we can expect that direct flight will become the main method of cross-Strait repatriation, and it will greatly increase timeliness and convenience.
2. Transfer of the offender
On April 21, 2010, special agents of Investigation Bureau of Taiwan escorted inmate Feng Li-Xin from Xiamen to Taiwan, so he could continue serving his sentence here. This set the first example of transfer of an offender according to the
"Nanjing Agreement". In March, 2009, Feng was sentenced to life imprisonment for drug smuggling in the mainland. He was originally serving his penalty in China early this year. Because he suffered from throat cancer with pulmonary metastasis, coupled with thalassemia disease, his family members asked the Ministry of Justice, Mainland Affairs Council and the SEF for help. Finally Feng was returned to Taiwan. According to article 11 of the "Nanjing Agreement", he will be sent back to Taiwan, serving the sentence and receiving medical care. After returning Feng to Taiwan, prosecutors decided that Feng was in serious condition and could not be imprisoned, so they
99 United Daily News(June 6, 2009), p. B2, synthetic news of Kaohsiung.
100 Available at: http://tw.news.yahoo.com/article/url/d/a/100529/1/26imw.html. Date of logging on:
06/09/2010.
101 Available at: http://tw.news.yahoo.com/article/url/d/a/100604/5/26wc5.html. Date of logging on:
06/09/2010.
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decided to restrict him from leaving the country, demanding his family members take care of Feng Li-Xin and report his condition daily to police. According to the data of the Ministry of Justice, Taiwan received a total of 141 requests to return criminals from the mainland, and Feng is the first successful case.102
3. Investigation and evidence collecting
In the financial reform scandal case of former President Chen Shui-Bian, the defendant Qiu De-Xin, financial president of China Development LTD co., was sued for helping to launder overseas money for Chen’s family. Qiu asked the court for the remote video questioning of two witnesses Liu Xiao-Ning, Pan Jian-Hua, who are the owners of dummy accounts and living in Hong Kong. On May 10 this year, after hearing the discussion, the presiding judge of the court Zhou Zhan-Chun thought that Hong Kong is only an area, not a state. Since Taiwan and China have signed
agreements on mutual legal assistance in combating crime, Zhou suggested that
"commissioned interrogation" methods be used to enable the witness in Shenzhen, Guangdong, to be questioned by the court. Then the testimony could be sent back to Taiwan. After that, the testimony will have legal effect. If Qiu De-Xin's lawyer agrees, two witnesses will go to the mainland and be interrogated. That will be the first case in which a witness is interrogated by a mainland China court at the request of a Taiwan court after the signing of “Nanjing Agreement”.103