A discovery of stowaways by Japanese coast guards triggered a joint investigation which led to the arrests of the accused masterminds behind the racket.

So far law enforcement officers have arrested 42 of the 100 or so wanted suspects, including accused ringleader Chen Wenshu and other alleged major conspirators.

Further investigations are ongoing and no trial date has yet been fixed, Nanjing Procuratorate in East China's Jiangsu Province revealed.

The amount of suspects involved are the largest number detected in one illegal immigrant smuggling crime ring since 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded, the sources added.

The smuggling operation was exposed in November 2000 after a group of 17 stowaways aboard a Chinese ocean-going ship were found and detained by coast guards at a Japanese port.

Subsequent inquiries revealed the massive extent of the illegal immigrant ring, allegedly involving 100 employees from six international shipping companies in five provinces and two cities.

Chen Wenshu, the top snakehead triad leader, is said to have launched the smuggling racket in 1998, when several consignments of illegal immigrants have been smuggled into Japan.

Initial investigations indicate that about 730 stowaways have been smuggled into Japan from ports in Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Liaoning provinces and the municipalities of Shanghai and Tianjin.

The illegal immigrants are all from East China's Fujian Province where human smuggling has been rampant over the decades.

A number of shipping company heads and employees seduced by the lucrative rewards to be had from the criminal trade have been arrested.

Their vital role was to provide the alleged triad gangsters behind the racket with ships, under the guise they were legitimate leasing and business partners.

In the two years that the smuggling operation was active, Chen is said to have rented nine vessels and shipped about 730 illegal immigrants into Japan.

(China Daily October 31, 2002)