Taiwan

Jurisdiction

Extradition

After arresting 14 Taiwanese and 10 mainland Chinese suspects in a raid on an international fraud syndicate in Manila that had allegedly swindled 140m yuan from mainland victims, the Philippine government decided to deport all the suspects to mainland China and rejected Taiwan's call for the Taiwanese suspects to be returned to Taiwan on the grounds that the suspects did not face criminal charges in Taiwan and had not produced their travel documents anyway. "The evidence is in China, the crime was committed in China, so it was in our best national interest to deport them to China," a Philippine government spokesman said. In response, the Taiwanese government angrily imposed a four-month freeze on work applications from Filipinos. The Philippine justice secretary suggested that Taiwan and Beijing should settle the row between themselves according to the 2009 cross-straits agreement on crime fighting and mutual judicial assistance.