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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》 Cabinet approves stricter crime ring act
The Executive Yuan building in Taipei is pictured in an undated photograph. Photo: CNA
SENT TO LEGISLATURE: The amendments would enable courts to hand down severe penalties for fraudsters such as those who lured Taiwanese to Cambodia, the MOJ said
By Jake Chung / Staff writer, with CNA
The Executive Yuan on Thursday approved amendments to the Organized Crime Prevention Act （組織犯罪防治條例） that would increase the maximum prison sentence for people who attempt to incite others to commit a crime or join a criminal organization outside Taiwan to seven years and double the maximum fine to NT$20 million （US$651,254）.
The amendments to the act, which currently stipulates a prison sentence of six month to five years for such offenses, are to be sent to the Legislative Yuan for review.
The amendments would also enable law enforcement agencies to more easily confiscate illicit gains from criminal organizations, seeking to discourage people from participating in illegal activities.
The draft, alongside proposed amendments to the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act （總統副總統選舉罷免法） and the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act （公職人員選舉罷免法）, would also bar people who have been charged with election-related offenses from running for public office.
The Ministry of Justice （MOJ） said the amendment to the organized crime act would enable courts to hand down severe penalties for people who recruit others to work in telephone fraud schemes abroad — for example in Cambodia, after several high-profile cases in the country — sexual and labor exploitation, and organ harvesting.
The ministry said local authorities would work with their international peers to investigate such offenses and make arrests.
Separately, prosecutors on Saturday said they had indicted five suspects who had held people hostage to access their bank accounts, after they had lured them to their premises with promises of lucrative jobs.
The Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement that the suspects, including the alleged gang leader, a 22-year-old man surnamed Peng （彭）, were on Dec. 6 charged for contravening organized crime laws, as well as offenses against personal liberty, causing bodily harm and intimidation.
The suspects allegedly used fake job ads that promised high pay for relatively easy work to lure people to an abandoned building in Kaohsiung’s Jiasian District （甲仙）.
The jobseekers were forced to stay there and were beaten if they resisted or tried to flee, prosecutors said.
They were forced to hand over their smartphones, bank account details and personal seals to the gang members, who used them to launder money, prosecutors said.
The case came to light on Aug. 25 when one of the jobseekers escaped and called police from a nearby private home. Police immediately headed to the building and arrested the five suspects.
Investigators said that a female jobseeker in her 40s was reportedly shot with a stun gun and beaten with a water pipe after she tried to flee.
She had written down the license plate of a vehicle used by the hostage takers that she intended to use to help police identify them, investigators added.
Other jobseekers were burned with cigarettes, police said.
Police freed six hostages, and seized stun guns, pepper spray, handcuffs, metal rods, wire nails, account books and bank cards at the building, police said.
Peng had been convicted of armed robbery two years earlier, but went into hiding before being cought and serving a prison sentence of seven years and 10 months, police said.
Prosecutors said after his identity was confirmed, Peng was sent to jail immediately after his arrest.
Prosecutors said they are seeking heavy sentences for the five suspects.
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
