As General Stanley McChrystal famously observed, “it takes a network to defeat a network”. Criminal organisations across the globe are scaling at a rapid pace, digitising and decentralising their activities well beyond the border of any single jurisdiction. INTERPOL’s recent Operation HAECHI V, spanning 40 countries and exposing over USD 430 million in cross-border fraud, demonstrates the industrial scale of modern criminal networks and how they ignore jurisdictional boundaries. To stand any chance in the fight against organised crime, organisations like INTERPOL must have eyes and ears in every aligned country across the world.
Yet despite the imperative for full global coverage, INTERPOL’s exclusion of Taiwan creates a critical blind spot in the Indo-Pacific’s law enforcement architecture. Taiwan serves as a major logistics hub linking Southeast and Northeast Asia, with its financial system processing billions in cross-border transactions, and its cyber infrastructure connecting critical technology supply chains. While Taiwan operates one of the region’s most capable police forces, consistently ranking among the world’s five safest countries, it remains locked out of INTERPOL’s I-24/7 intelligence database and operational frameworks. This gap is precisely what sophisticated criminal networks are designed to exploit.
The case of Lisa Lines, an Australian who fled to Taiwan in 2017 after allegedly arranging a violent attack on her ex-husband, illustrates how Taiwan’s exclusion from INTERPOL helps criminals. INTERPOL issued a red notice—an international request to law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest an individual pending extradition. Yet if Taiwan was affiliated with INTERPOL, Lines would have been apprehended more quickly and directly. An uncomplicated example of how exclusion creates operational delays that benefit fugitives.
These gaps are avoidable because Taiwan brings proven capabilities that address regional security gaps. Its cybercrime units have developed world-class expertise in cryptocurrency tracing and recovering stolen digital assets, critical as East Asian fraud factories extracted $2 billion from Australian victims in 2024 alone. With Taiwan’s globally respected capabilities in combating cybercrime, its stellar record in tracing and recovering stolen funds, and its long experience in the fight against human trafficking and child exploitation, Taiwan is clearly a natural partner for INTERPOL.
As Dr John Coyne of ASPI’s National Security Program notes in his recent article, Taiwan has made significant contributions to dismantling transnational money laundering schemes and trafficking networks. He points out that INTERPOL, a non-political organisation created to “ensure no jurisdiction becomes a safe haven for criminals, is knowingly creating blind spots in its own network”.
Taiwan’s exclusion signals to criminal networks that political considerations create exploitable gaps in international security frameworks. Despite INTERPOL’s constitutional commitment to promoting the widest possible mutual assistance between all police authorities, and its professed neutrality, the organisation has, as Dr Coyne puts it, “been bent by geopolitics” to exclude an important, willing, and highly capable partner. INTERPOL’s own constitution explicitly prohibits involvement in “political, military, religious or racial matters”. Including Taiwan as an observer would be fully consistent with that principle, strengthening the organisation’s foundational neutrality.
There is, however, a practical (and apolitical) pathway forward. Granting observer status to Taiwan would enable operational cooperation without prejudicing political positions. This would provide Taiwan access to INTERPOL databases, enable participation in training programs and working groups, and help close intelligence gaps that currently undermine the global fight against cross-border crime.
As Taiwan’s Chief Representative in Australia, I call upon all nations to support Taiwan’s inclusion in the upcoming INTERPOL General Assembly as an observer. Taiwan remains steadfast in its commitment to good global citizenship, and INTERPOL participation would allow us to further contribute to global peace, safety and stability.
Criminals respect no borders and recognise no politics. If it truly ‘takes a network to defeat a network’, then keeping Taiwan outside INTERPOL deprives the international community of a capable partner it urgently needs.
Douglas Hsu is the Representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Australia.
Australian Outlook occasionally publishes pieces by figures representing government or other bodies. As with all pieces published by Outlook, these are edited and checked for facts. They do not, however, represent the view of Outlook or the Australian Institute of International Affairs.
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