International cooperation on crime

Saturday, 26 May 2012 00:48 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

THE arrest of 17 Chinese nationals is a wakeup call to law enforcement authorities in Sri Lanka about the country’s vulnerability to international crime syndicates.

Chinese police arrested 482 Chinese nationals from several countries including Sri Lanka who were allegedly involved in a trans-national telephone fraud. Accordingly, on Wednesday, mainland police (Chinese Police), assisted by Taiwan police, worked with their counterparts in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Fiji to bust a large cross-border telephone scam gang.

This coming on top of the massive smuggling racket of African elephant tusks, growing drug and gold trafficking through Sri Lanka shows that the country’s strategic geographical location can be a negative.

Reports said that Chinese Police arrested 482 suspects, including 177 people from the Chinese mainland, 286 from Taiwan and 19 from Thailand and Myanmar, who allegedly were connected with 510 telecom swindling cases, and cheated Chinese victims out of 73 million yuan ($11 million) from 2010 to 2011.

Sri Lankan police on Thursday said that 17 Chinese including six women were arrested by the CID at Rajagiriya yesterday on charges of having defrauded more than two million dollars from several banks in China.

The fraud case unravelled in November, when a financial manager surnamed Sha from an investment company in Suzhou, East China’s Jiangsu province, reported to local police that she had been swindled for 12.6 million yuan through telephone fraud.

After the investigation, police discovered that the swindler who called Sha pretended to be a local police officer. Over the next three days, the suspects again pretended to be staff from an anti-money laundering special work team, and asked Sha to transfer the company’s financial fund to a “safe” designated account, which Sha did.

In early May, the ministry sent six investigation teams consisting of 70 police officers to the six countries to assist them with gathering evidence and making arrests.

Officials also speculate that the stash of elephant tusks was destined for eastern markets including China. This opens up a bigger challenge for law enforcement authorities to liaison with international police as well as be more vigilant in protecting law and order. This also creates a need for better professionalism, less politicisation and all in all clearing up the ills that affect the law enforcement authorities.

On the other hand there is also a need for immigration officials to be more vigilant. Actively arresting and deporting offenders is a grave need and despite the close diplomatic and trade relations that Sri Lanka may have with these countries no quarter can be given in such instances. Taking advantage of a booming tourism industry and lax visa systems is unjustifiable for people with criminal intentions.

While the apprehending of these criminals deserves praise there are other offenders that would continue to use Sri Lanka for nefarious purposes. The dangers of child abuse have been highlighted before and this is another aspect where international cooperation can yield high results.

Protecting the integrity of each other is a great way for countries to foster mutual interest and strengthen ties but most importantly it keeps people of all countries safer.