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.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS