A FORMER high-ranking government official of Taiwan is set to be deported by the Bureau of Immigration (BI) to face trial for fraud for his alleged involvement in game-fixing syndicates.
Immigration Commissioner Jaime H. Morente identified the Taiwanese national as Wu Chien Pao, 68 years old.
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (Teco) in Manila had identified Wu as a former government official in Taiwan who held the post of speaker of Tainan County and is wanted by prosecutors in Taipei for fraud since October 2014.
The speaker heads 57 elected councilors in Tainan County and is chosen by fellow councilors through anonymous voting.
Wu was arrested on January 16 at the Subic Freeport Zone in Zambales by operatives from the Bureau’s Fugitive Search Unit. The FSU members were armed with a mission order, which was issued by the BI upon the Teco’s request.
The BI noted that Taiwanese news outlets describe Wu’s crime as “one of the largest issues to hit Taiwanese baseball” after he was accused of fixing results of Chinese Professional Baseball League games involving popular players in his country, in collusion with illegal gambling syndicates.
“He will be deported for being an undesirable and undocumented alien,” the BI chief said, adding that Wu’s Taiwanese passport already expired in April 2017.
Wu was the second former foreign government official who arrested by the BI this month.
Earlier , the BI-FSU agents arrested in Pasay City a former Chinese ranking government official wanted by Beijing authorities for corruption and economic crimes.
Xie Haojie, 49, who was arrested in a joint operation by the BI and Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission, is allegedly wanted in China over a multimillion-dollar embezzlement case.
Xie left China and had gone into hiding for almost a year in the Philippines to evade prosecution after the Chinese government launched an all-out campaign against corruption, which cracked down abusive government high-ranking officials and employees.
The BI said they would be placed in the immigration blacklist to prevent them from going back to the Philippines.