On Saturday 14th October, three Rolls Royce cars and around a dozen men arrived at Yilan Prison in Taiwan to collect released prisoner Tseng Ying-fu (曾盈富), who then went to a dinner at the Marriot Hotel in Taipei organised by Wu Tung-tan (吳桐潭), a senior leader of the Celestial Alliance (天道盟, Tiandao League).
Tseng Ying-fu had been imprisoned for one year and two months and when released was driven in a Rolls Royce SUV. His first stop after release was to a restaurant to eat a bowl of pig’s feet noodles, which according to criminal customs is a way of casting off bad luck, and then off to visit his elderly mother.
(Above, Tseng Ying-fu. Source: SETN, 14 October 2023)
(Above, Tseng Ying-fu. Source: SETN, 14 October 2023)
Wu has been reported as the second in command of the Celestial Alliance, deputy to Lo Fu-chu (羅福助). Wu led the ‘Sun Branch’ of the Celestial Alliance and operated the Sound of Music Nightclub in Taipei. Wu’s criminal influence was illustrated in 2022 when he told reporters that the Celestial Alliance and other Taiwan Triad gangs would step up efforts to rescue Taiwanese trapped by fraud syndicates in South East Asia and that the gangs were being purged to prevent their members from taking part in such activities. One gang member stated that they only need the name of a victim and they could then use friends in South East Asia to locate the victim, as long as he or she is still alive !
According to the excellent analysis of organised crime in Taiwan by Ko-lin Chin, Wu was wanted by the authorities during anti-crime ‘Operation Thunderbolt’ in 1990 but he and Lo Fu-chu fled to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Wu was arrested in the Fuzhou in 1991 and repatriated to Taiwan, although he returned later to the PRC where he operated a luxury hotel. Wu was eventually forced to leave Fuzhou again in 1999 after he had an affair with the mistress of a senior PRC government official. Wu then spent more time in Cambodia, which according to the Cambodian authorities has been a haven for Taiwanese Triad leaders.
Wu is ruthless. He reportedly trained the “Sun Commando” group of the Celestial Alliance and required members to survive on their own in the mountains and to kill a dog with their hands. Training of killers for the Celestial Alliance also takes place in Cambodia, and successful members are awarded ‘Tiger silver medals’.
In September 2019, the Celestial Alliance reportedly held a banquet with 30 tables for Wu Tung-tan to celebrate his 70th birthday. Not only did well known Taiwanese celebrities attend the banquet, but also a representative from a faction of the 14K Triad in Hong Kong, as well as Wu’s senior followers such as Tseng Ying-fu.
Asia Crime Century readers may recall the report regarding the last Taiwanese gang dinner held at the Taipei Marriot Hotel, hosted by the Bamboo United Gang to celebrate Lunar New Year in February 2023. The Bamboo United Gang dinner involved 85 tables for around 1,000 people who were greeted by 170 young girls dressed in cheong sam dresses as well as a parade of luxury sports cars.
The Celestial Alliance gang was reportedly established inside the Taipei Detention Centre on 31 October 1986 by Taiwanese Triads and other criminals who grouped together in response to the dominance of the Bamboo United Gang members who were the largest group in the prison. The founder of the Celestial Alliance was Lo Fu-chu, who wanted to develop the organisation into something similar to Japanese Yakuza groups. Lo developed the Celestial Alliance into a business group that operated a wide variety of business lines including construction, entertainment, the hotel industry, waste disposal, real estate, extortion, illegal logging, cyber-crime, human trafficking, arms and drug smuggling, loansharking, illegal gambling, and prostitution. Lo has become so successful that he was a member of the Legislative Yuen, the Taiwan parliament, from 1996 to 2002.
Combatting gangs such as the Celestial Alliance has been complicated by their links to the politics of Taiwan. The Kuomintang (KMT) party has fringe groups that have had alleged links to criminal gangs used for political purposes, such as the pro-unification of China group called the Huang Fu-hsing (黃復興) branch that reportedly has members who are military veterans or their family members. The Huang Fu-hsing branch has historically consisted of senior figures from the Nationalist army’s KMT party branch, known as the Wang Shih-kai (王師凱) headquarters, who fled from Mainland China with Chiang Kai-shek in 1949.
Prominent KMT politician Han Kuo-yu, who was defeated in the presidential election in 2020 by Tsai Ing-wen, is reportedly connected to the Celestial Alliance and also to the Huang Fu-hsing. Han’s parents fled from Mainland China in the 1940s with the retreating Nationalist army and he has been an outspoken proponent of the Republic of China (Taiwan) developing closer links with the People’s Republic of China. During at times physically violent conflicts between KMT and DPP members of the Legislative Yuan in the early 1990s, Han was supported by Lo Fu-chu and Celestial Alliance members who would all wear black suits when gathering outside the legislature to intimidate DPP members and supporters.
Lo Fu-chu and the Celestial Alliance became more directly involved in politics in 1996 when he was elected as a member of the Legislative Yuan, as an independent not as a member of the KMT, serving two terms until 2002. In addition, one of Lo’s sons had also been elected to the Legislative Yuan in 1992 (as a KMT representative) and another was a member of a municipal assembly. The Celestial Alliance was clearly a political power as well as a criminal power.
In March 2012, the Taiwan Supreme Court had sentenced Lo Fu-chu to four years in prison and fined him NT$6 million for stock manipulation, document forgery and money laundering under, but he failed to report to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office to begin serving a four-year prison term and is believed to have he fled to Mainland China. The statute of limitations on the convictions against Lo will not expire until December 2030, when he will be 87. The Coast Guard Administration’s 23rd Patrol Corps compiled pictures of potential disguises that Lo might have used when leaving Taiwan (below).
(Source: Taipei Times, Convicted former legislator allegedly goes missing, 22 April 2012)
In October 2023, DPP legislative candidates announced an alliance to counter the “black gold” families who are running against them in elections in January. The DPP candidates identified Lo Fu-chu and his son Lo Ming-tsai, who has served seven consecutive terms as a KMT legislator, as infamous for their “criminal activities, stock manipulation, improper influence in the construction sector and financial fraud.” They alleged that the Lo family has been occupying public land as well as defrauding investors.
Relationships with Triad gangs in Taiwan are deeply rooted. In December 2020, a leader of the Celestial Alliance and several associates were arrested for alleged bid-rigging and violence related to the submission of public tenders for two nuclear power plants in the New Taipei City area.
In January 2023, police officers in Keelung were reprimanded for attending the birthday banquet of a local leader of the Celestial Alliance. One of the officers said that his intention in going to the dinner was to “consult” with the gang leader.
The Celestial Alliance seems to be established in Taiwan and the authorities unable to completely eradicate its criminality. This may be because of the lessons that Lo Fu-chu and Wu Tungtang learnt from studying Yazuza gangs in Japan, learning how to establish corporate structures and ensure continuity of multiple business lines so that if the authorities shut down one then there are others to continue to provide income.
More troubling are the links between Triads in Taiwan and the regional transnational organised crime that has been characterised in the past several years with the explosion of online fraud and people trafficking. The use of Cambodia and other parts of South East Asia by Taiwan Triad leaders as safe havens for many years indicates how established their transnational businesses may have become.