A US Federal Court in Virginia sentenced a Taiwan-born New Orleans businessman to nearly 16 years in prison on Friday for spying for China. Kuo Tai-shen (郭台生), who spent decades developing business ties with China, was convicted for passing on secrets to Beijing about US arms sales to Taiwan.
The 58-year-old member of a prominent Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) family could have faced life imprisonment, but was given lighter treatment as a result of a plea agreement with US Department of Justice prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty on May 13 to a charge of conspiracy to deliver national defense information to China.
An affidavit prosecutors filed with the court when Kuo was arrested in February said that from March last year to the time he was arrested, Kuo, a naturalized US citizen, received information on Taiwan arms sales from Gregg Bergersen, a senior weapons analyst with the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), the unit that handles all foreign arms sales.
The information dealt with command and communications technology and systems that were central to the Po Sheng, or “Broad Victory,” air defense system that Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense inaugurated in 2003, as well as top secret information on the US’ five-year plan for arms sales to Taiwan compiled by the DSCA.
Bergersen was a leading DSCA expert on the systems, called C4ISR — for commend, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The systems would allow Taiwan and the US to coordinate their operations to respond effectively in the event of a Chinese military attack.
Bergersen was the top “go-to” man named on the DSCA’s Web site on the subject. One DSCA article naming Bergersen described C4ISR as “the glue cementing the ... transformation of US fighting forces ... [which] covers everything from man-portable radios to multi-million dollar fighter aircraft.”
It is a “crucial component of interoperability,” between US and “coalition partners,” it said.
Prosecutors said the information Bergersen supplied Kuo was funneled through a “cut out” intermediary, a Chinese-born woman named Kang Yuxin who also pleaded guilty and was sentenced last week to 18 years in prison. Bergersen was sentenced last month to 57 months.
Kuo was sentenced to 188 months and fined US$40,000. The prosecutor said that China had paid Kuo US$50,000 for the information.
In court, the justice department presented information showing that Kuo had led Bergersen to believe the information would be going to Taiwanese officials, but instead sent it on to an unnamed “PLA [People’s Liberation Army] Officer A” who worked in Hong Kong and Guangzhou.
In exchange for Bergersen’s information, Kuo promised him a high-paying job in a company selling US defense equipment abroad, which Kuo said he would form after Bergersen retired. Kuo also showered Bergersen with gifts including gambling trips to Las Vegas.
Kuo — who’s father-in-law was General Xue Yue (薛岳), a long-time a key adviser to dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) — emigrated from Taiwan to the New Orleans area in 1973 and became a prominent citizen in the area, opening businesses including a restaurant, an import furniture business and other enterprises, with most of his activities promoting trade with China.
But Kuo was relatively unknown among the Taiwanese-American community in the New Orleans area, some Taiwanese-American leaders said. He is said to have avoided much contact with other Taiwanese-Americans and did not take part in community events.
He was described by the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper as a major dealer with Chinese businesses and a person who cultivated important business and personal relationships with Chinese officials, mainly in Guangdong and Hong Kong.
Former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards once appointed Kuo to a government-sponsored Louisiana Imports and Exports Trust Authority, and a former state legislator, Noble Ellington, recalled that Kuo brought a delegation of Chinese visitors to the state capitol in the 1990s.
Among Kuo’s other exploits: He represented 11 oil companies on a trip to China, started a company to develop text-messaging technology before cellphone messaging exploded in popularity, floated state bonds to foster international investing and worked with a Mississippi company to get the rights to lay fiber-optic cables near Guangzhou.
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