The Taiwan High Court yesterday reduced the prison sentence of former intelligence officer Colonel Luo Chi-cheng (羅奇正) from life to 18 years in an espionage case.
Luo formerly worked for the Ministry of National Defense’s Military Intelligence Bureau. He was charged with espionage, selling classified information to China and corruption by the Military High Court in 2011.
In two earlier rulings by the Military High Court, he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
Luo appealed after the second ruling and the case was taken up by the Taiwan High Court, after revisions to the Code of Court Martial Procedure (軍事審判法) last year.
When the case broke in 2011, it was of particular concern because Luo was a double agent, covertly providing China with classified information while working for the Military Intelligence Bureau, where he had access to vital state and military documents.
Luo was a top-ranked intelligence bureau officer in the No. 2 division, in charge of intelligence-gathering and counterintelligence missions on China.
At the time of Luo’s court-martial in 2011, media reported that he was the nation’s highest-ranking intelligence officer to have been convicted in the previous two decades.
The original court statement said that Luo copied highly classified information from inside the bureau and loaded it onto a USB memory stick.
The contents of the USB disk included names and missions of Taiwanese agents operating in China for intelligence-gathering and other espionage activities, according to the court statement.
Luo handed the data to an intermediary, an undercover agent acting as a businessman, who traveled to Hong Kong to hand over the information to a Chinese intelligence officer.
The prosecution said Luo’s double-agent activities started in 2007 and he provided classified information to China on numerous occasions in exchange for payment.
In the ruling yesterday, the court found Luo guilty of “espionage for the enemy” according to Article 17 of the Criminal Code of the Armed Forces (陸海空軍刑法), and also on corruption charges, for falsifying expense receipts to receive reimbursments. Luo allegedly received rewards of about NT$7.4 million (US$246,600).
The ruling can be appealed.
“This man has betrayed our nation, working as a spy for China. He should serve life for his crime and never be allowed to be released from prison,” a netizen wrote yesterday in reaction to the news.
Some netizens said Luo would have been executed right away for selling out the state and people of Taiwan, had the case happened during the Martial Law era.
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