The Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday indicted former independent legislative candidate Ma Chih-wei (馬治薇) for allegedly passing information to China and receiving financial support from Beijing as she prepared to run in the legislative elections on Jan. 13.
An office spokesperson said it is seeking a 44-month prison sentence and NT$2 million (US$63,279) fine for Ma for contravening the Anti-infiltration Act (反滲透法), National Security Act (國家安全法) and Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法).
Ma has been detained by prosecutors since Jan. 5 as they investigated allegations that she collaborated with China. The indictment was handed down following the completion of that probe.
Photo: Cheng Shu-ting, Taipei Times
Ma contravened the Anti-Infiltration Act — enacted to prevent the intervention of “foreign hostile forces” in Taiwan — by taking money from an “infiltrative entity” to fund her election bid, prosecutors claim.
She breached the National Security Act by passing on “Taiwanese intelligence and other election-related information to her benefactors,” they said.
The 40-year-old allegedly became acquainted with Chinese “people involved in Taiwan affairs” during a trip to China in early April last year, and the two sides discussed providing political intelligence on Taiwan in exchange for funding from China, the indictment says.
She visited China several times in April and May last year, when she received her first two remittances of US$10,000 and US$5,000, it says.
She visited China multiple times between October and December last year, and received US$8,306, US$1,106 and US$9,910 in the form of tether cryptocurrency, it says.
In exchange for the payments totaling about NT$1 million, Ma gave her handlers a book containing a list of contacts for central government agencies provided to legislators, prosecutors said.
The book, which prosecutors said is meant to be kept confidential, contained the job titles, names and phone numbers of officials working in the Presidential Office, Executive Yuan and National Security Bureau.
Ma — who had little chance of winning the high-profile race in her district and finished third in a three-way race with 8.56 percent of the vote — also took instructions from her Chinese contacts on running her campaign, prosecutors said.
Due to Ma’s insistence that she did not do anything wrong and her lack of cooperation with investigators, the office recommended a more severe sentencing to the Taoyuan District Court, where she is being detained.
Ma was previously a reporter for a local media outlet and was the Taoyuan chapter spokesperson for the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) last year.
She registered as an independent candidate in November last year after failing to secure the TPP’s official support.
She was expelled from the party on Jan. 6, one day after she was detained.
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