China and Taiwan are working together to crack down on criminal activity in the cross-strait region and beyond. That's according to Taiwan's Criminal Investigation Bureau Commissioner Huang Chia-lu, who addressed lawmakers on Thursday to discuss the bureau's annual budget.
Some lawmakers questioned the necessity of the bureau's budget for foreign travel expenses. Huang says that China and Taiwan are cooperating together to fight the threat of overseas crime, especially scam groups in Turkey and Macedonia. Huang says that the bureau needs a budget to send officers abroad to catch these criminals.
This discussion comes just after Taiwanese officers repatriated a Taiwanese man wanted in connection with the 2014 killing of a police officer. He was sentenced to 10.5 years in prison, but he escaped to China, where he was later arrested for other crimes and served two years in prison.
Huang says that China and Taiwan have cooperated to catch drug traffickers smuggling their goods through the Taiwan Strait, and that the two countries have spent around NT$400,000 (US$14,500) on catching cross-strait criminals this year.