《TAIPEI TIMES》Ten charged with selling Taiwanese passports

By Chiu Chun-fu and Jason Pan / Staff reporters

The Criminal Investigation Bureau （CIB） has discovered an alleged passport forgery ring based in Taiwan that sold Taiwanese passports for use by Chinese nationals so that they could enter European countries.

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The operation in Taiwan was allegedly headed by Zheng Zijuan （鄭子娟）, aged 56, a Chinese national who was previously married to a Taiwanese before later divorcing, and is now married to a Chinese man, surnamed He （何）. She had three Taiwanese working for her, and the five Taiwanese who allegedly sold the passports were indicted by the Yilan District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday.

The indictment said that the illegal sale of passports “detrimentally affects Taiwan’s national security and international image, and was likely part of a Chinese criminal ring involved in illegal international human smuggling into European countries.”

Along with contravening the Passport Act （護照條例）, the 10 suspects were also charged with colluding with organized criminal groups in China, and with contravening the Organized Crime Prevention Act （組織犯罪防制條例） with systematic plans to solicit multiple forged passports, as part of a sophisticated human smuggling operation on a major international scale, the indictment said.

“We were contacted by law-enformcent agencies in Europe after they uncovered many Chinese nationals entering and exiting across borders using Republic of China （ROC） passports. The total has been verified at about 50 passports,” CIB International Criminal Affairs Division official Yang Kuo-sung （楊國松） said.

The investigation found that about 20 Chinese nationals used 50 forged passports, with only one of them being arrested in Spain, while efforts are ongoing to track down the others, Yang said.

Zheng, who lives in Yilan County, divorced her Taiwanese husband soon after she obtained citizenship, and was working as a hostess in bars in Yilan. She linked up with a criminal ring based in her native Fuzhou in China’s Fujian Province, who paid her money to solicit Taiwanese willing to sell their passports, Yang said.

The investigation found that Zheng allegedly posted adverts on social media, offering prices of between NT$7,000 and NT$10,000 for each passport. She took pictures of the passports and sent it to the criminal gangs in China to find a rough match, such as similar age and facial features, investigators said.

The passports were sent by courier to accomplices who had set up bases in European countries, including in Italy, Spain and Greece, from where they would sell the passports for 30 times the price to Chinese nationals so that they could get into Europe, Yang said.

He said that Chinese criminal rings target ROC passports, as holders of ROC passports can receive visa-free entry to more than 110 countries, many more than Chinese passport holders, who only have visa-free entry to about 40 countries, of which most are not in Europe and North America, the most desired regions.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES