The Taichung branch of the High Court today sentenced retired military officer Chu Hung-i (屈宏義), chairman of the Rehabilitation Alliance Party, to 10 years in prison for recruiting retired military officers to spy for China.
Chu was found guilty of using Chinese funds to recruit retired military officers to take photographs, draw maps and collect the GPS coordinates of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) and Taiwanese military bases for Chinese intelligence.
Chu and six other retired officers, who were also sentenced today, were indicted in August last year for contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法) and the Anti-infiltration Act (反滲透法).
Photo: screen grab from the Ministry of the Interior's Web site
Huang Kuei-kun (黃桂坤), a Miaoli County councilor candidate in 2022, was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison. Tai Hsueh-wen (戴學文) and Lin Chien-hua (林健華) each received eight years, Chu Hsien-huan (朱賢寰) and Yu Tien-min (余天民) were each sentenced to seven years, and Liao Yung-ching (廖永清) was given three years and six months.
All of today’s verdicts can be appealed to the Supreme Court.
In 2022, the Miaoli District Prosecutors' Office investigated Huang for allegedly receiving funds from Chinese sources during the county councilor election campaign, in contravention of the Anti-infiltration Act. Miaoli prosecutors then investigated the Rehabilitation Alliance Party, and found that Huang and other party members were suspected of contravening the National Security Act.
The case was transferred to the Taichung branch of the High Prosecutors’ Office.
Prosecutors found that 62-year-old Chu, a Republic of China Army Academy graduate, had conducted business in China after retiring as an army officer.
In 2019, he became acquainted with military intelligence agencies from the People’s Liberation Army and was offered funding in exchange for forming a spy network of former military officials, prosecutors said.
Chu recruited six officers, including Huang, they said.
In 2023, Chu established the Rehabilitation Alliance Party, appointing himself as chairman.
He personally wrote the operation guidelines for the party, planning to expand it and build an internal armed force, and drafted guidelines for “unification” combat operations, prosecutors said.
Chu then recruited two locals and actor Liu Shang-chien (劉尚謙) to run for legislative seats.
They were unaware of the situation, prosecutors said.
Chu calculated the campaign budget and requested funding from his Chinese contacts, who transferred NT$2 million (US$68,390) via WeChat and an additional NT$670,000 from unregistered remittance services, prosecutors said.
Liu and the other candidates lost the local elections.
Chu then instructed his recruits to collect a list of officers ranked major general or higher and to photograph and record the GPS coordinates of military installations, prosecutors said.
The locations included the AIT, the Alishan Radar Station (阿里山), Pingtung County’s Jialutang Beach (加祿堂) and the Baoli camps (保力) of the Hengchun Joint Operations Training Base Command (恆春三軍聯合訓練基地), they said.
He sent the information to contacts in China via WeChat, prosecutors said.
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