Chapter 786: Compliments
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Li Du and his group were there to assist in the investigation, but they had nothing to do with the dealings between the officials. As a matter of fact, since the case had not yet been solved, they were considered suspects as well.
As the police had graciously requested that they stay in Hobart, there were rooms prepared for them in the hotel next to the police station. Consequently, Li Du and his group did not leave after having their statements taken.
The entire Tasmanian police force was deployed, and Devonport and all of the nearby ports were sealed off. Following which, an investigation uncovered the truth behind the cargo container that the children were in.
Before long, the findings of the investigation were released. The company that owned the cargo container was an electronic waste trading company based in Indonesia that profited from helping Australia discard its electronic waste.
The police closed down and investigated the electronic waste disposal company. Other than finding out that they had evaded paying taxes, no evidence could be found to show that they were involved in the child trafficking.
Later on, the police were re-deployed and clues about the child trafficking were finally found.
Although the electronic waste disposal company had nothing to do with the child trafficking, the workers in charge of declaring their goods at customs were.
Due to the case’s rapid development, the workers who were involved in the child trafficking were unable to escape. The two policemen, who initially came to resolve the conflict between Li Du’s group and the stevedores, were very experienced and lost no time in calling for backup to cordon off the port.
Ultimately, the two Indonesian workers who were involved in the case were arrested. After a round of interrogation, the truth behind the case was uncovered.
All four of the children were abducted by the two workers. Furthermore, the police suspected that the two workers were also connected to a trafficking case that involved a large number of children and a business that abducted and sold children.
As Li Du and his group had played a major part in the case, the policemen did not withhold information regarding the case from them. When Li Du and his group were not in the hotel, they were having fun in the police station’s reception room, where they continuously came into contact with policemen.
From talking to those policemen, they came to know the case’s details and were kept up to date with its development.
The child trafficking organization, which operated on a large scale, abducted children in Australia and transported them to Indonesia via cargo containers containing electronic waste before transporting them to Europe and selling them to families that wanted children.
As cargo containers containing electronic waste had high levels of contamination and radiation, customs officers were all unwilling to check them carefully. Furthermore, the radiation from the electronic waste would affect the readings on the machines that were used by customs officers for checking cargo containers.
As such, the children were placed in a long, deep sleep. They were fed sleeping pills or injected with sedatives, and had an oxygen tank to supply them with air. In this way, they were cut off from the outside world.
Although the police never thought that the missing children would be transported to Indonesia, they suspected that the culprits used the ports in the northern region of Australia to transport the children.
After all, the northern region of Australia was closer to Indonesia.
Little did the police know, the culprits hit them where they were the most vulnerable by using a roundabout route. By departing from a port in the southern region that had relatively lax security, the culprits were able to catch the Australian police and customs officials off guard.
When the truth behind the case was uncovered, the members of the child abduction and trafficking organization were rounded up in one fell swoop. Following which, the Australian police contacted Interpol and requested they head over to Indonesia to further investigate the case.
Li Du and his group, who played the roles of the discoverers of the abducted children, the outstanding foreigners who acted righteously, and Australia’s heroes, had nothing to do with the latter events that transpired.
Indeed, Li Du and his group had become heroes for the time being, especially Lu Guan, who was considered the first person to have discovered the abducted children. Furthermore, with the police and media modifying the story of how Li Du and his group discovered the abducted children, the discovery took on a legendary quality.
By helping them solve a serious case that could have become unsolvable, Li Du and his group had been a great help to the police. The police returned the favor by saying lots of good things about them to the media.
In particular, the police complimented Lu Guan for being an extremely courageous and righteous man, and introduced him to the media as the man who had an extraordinary sense of hearing and observation skills.
Besides being complimented, Li Du and his group also received a sum of money.
Being a very important department, the National Missing Persons Coordination Center received huge amounts of donations, which they used to search for people who had gone missing from all walks of life.
For every missing child case, a huge reward would be offered by the center. Take small Superman Howard’s case for example —a person could receive a 100,000 AUD reward if they provided useful information about the case.
Since Li Du and his group had found four children in one go, and every one of the children had a reward offered for them, they were rewarded with a total of 1,800,000 AUD for finding the four children!
Although this was a huge sum of money, paying taxes on such rewards was not necessary according to Australia’s laws.
The police gave Li Du and his group the reward money when the truth behind the case was uncovered.
Even though Li Du and his group lost four days of their time that could have been used to harvest black gold abalone, they earned even more money and had actually profited from the case.
As Li Du and his group had made a huge contribution to Australian society, they also received another reward—having the right to harvest black gold abalone for an entire year! This reward was the most profitable for them.
The harvesting season for black gold abalone lasted six months, which was already considered a very long duration. After all, the harvesting season for most of the rare seafood in the world only lasted between ten to less than 100 days.
For example, the harvesting of Alaskan king crab was only permitted for about ten days a year.
Due to harvesters only being able to rely on free-diving when harvesting black gold abalone, the use of tools being prohibited, and the strict criteria for the abalones that could be harvested, black gold abalones were very well protected.
Australia had been conserving black gold abalone for close to 30 years. After all those years of conservation, the black gold abalones had been restored to a very healthy number.
As such, the department of fishing and hunting, and the marine department were in the midst of gradually relaxing the regulations in the harvesting of black gold abalone.
In the past, during the period when the protection of black gold abalone was at its heaviest, the harvesting season only lasted for one and a half months per year before it was gradually increased to six months.
Although Li Du and his group were allowed to harvest black gold abalone for an entire year, which was a reward that they received from the department of fishing and hunting, they were still not allowed to use any tools when harvesting.
The department of fishing and hunting, and the marine department presented Li Du and his group with a harvesting certificate, which was issued specially for them, during a press conference that the departments organized in the police station.
For the press conference, which took place in the lobby of Hobart police station, Li Du arranged for Hans and Lu Guan to attend on behalf of the group since both of them were the most fond of being in the spotlight.
Having returned from touring around Tasmania, Sophie, Hannah, and the others joined Li Du and his group to attend the press conference as spectators.
The guardians of the four children also attended the press conference. For the children’s safety, Howard and the other children remained in the hospital and did not appear at the press conference.
As the whole of Australia was fixated on the case, the scale of the press conference was comparatively large, and many international media outlets sent their people to participate.
Hans and Lu Guan were quick and eloquent when answering the unceasing flow of questions by the reporters. Both of them were very apt for such a situation and handled the press conference very well.
Truth be told, they did not have much difficulty answering the questions. Since they were heroes, the media did not put them in a tough spot, and all they had to do was to tell their story. The people whom the media put in a tough spot were those in the police station and the National Missing Persons Coordination Center.
