The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted Taiwan People’s Communist Party Chairman Lin Te-wang (林德旺), along with party members Cheng Chien-hsin (鄭建炘) and Yu Sheng-hung (余聲洪), over alleged contraventions of the Anti-infiltration Act (反滲透法) and asked the court to consider heavy penalties.
Lin, who had been a Central Committee member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), has traveled to China as a representative of Taiwanese businesspeople in China since 2007, investigators said.
After the KMT stripped him of his membership, Lin in 2016 made a failed bid for the legislative seat representing Tainan’s first electoral district, prosecutors said, adding that he founded the Taiwan People’s Communist Party in 2017 and has been its chairman since then.
Photo: Taipei Times
Lin forged close ties with Hu Chunguang (胡春光), an official of the Political Party Bureau of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, for over a decade, prosecutors said.
In a bid to elicit support from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for his businesses in China, Lin hosted multiple visits by CCP officials and was directed by Hu to involve himself in Taiwan’s elections to advance China’s “united front” efforts, the indictment said.
Lin allegedly instructed Cheng to run for Taipei city councilor last year and later worked with Yu to illegally import Chinese-made COVID-19 rapid test kits in a bid to bolster his party’s election prospects, it said.
Lin also used Chinese national flags given to him by the Vexillological Research Center China at protests against a visit to Taipei in August last year by then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi in hopes of being made an agent to sell Chinese-made Maotai liquor, and becoming the go-to person to arrange tours by CCP personnel to Taiwan, the indictment said.
Lin was also charged with planning to give NT$500 and the Chinese rapid antigen test kits to protesters mobilized by his party at rallies against Pelosi.
Prosecutors said they sought severe penalties, as Lin and Chen had not cooperated with the probe.
The trio have denied the charges.
Authorities have detained three former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TMSC, 台積電) employees on suspicion of compromising classified technology used in making 2-nanometer chips, the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. Prosecutors are holding a former TSMC engineer surnamed Chen (陳) and two recently sacked TSMC engineers, including one person surnamed Wu (吳) in detention with restricted communication, following an investigation launched on July 25, a statement said. The announcement came a day after Nikkei Asia reported on the technology theft in an exclusive story, saying TSMC had fired two workers for contravening data rules on advanced chipmaking technology. Two-nanometer wafers are the most
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
A bipartisan group of US representatives have introduced a draft US-Taiwan Defense Innovation Partnership bill, aimed at accelerating defense technology collaboration between Taiwan and the US in response to ongoing aggression by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The bill was introduced by US representatives Zach Nunn and Jill Tokuda, with US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar and US Representative Ashley Hinson joining as original cosponsors, a news release issued by Tokuda’s office on Thursday said. The draft bill “directs the US Department of Defense to work directly with Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense through their respective
Tsunami waves were possible in three areas of Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Services said yesterday after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the nearby Kuril Islands. “The expected wave heights are low, but you must still move away from the shore,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app, after the latest seismic activity in the area. However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in Hawaii said there was no tsunami warning after the quake. The Russian tsunami alert was later canceled. Overnight, the Krasheninnikov volcano in Kamchatka erupted for the first time in 600 years, Russia’s RIA
RSS