The Taipei District Court today sentenced four former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members for espionage and leaking sensitive information — itineraries of the vice president’s visits to diplomatic nations — to intelligence officials from the Chinese Central Military Commission.
Former councilor assistant Huang Chu-jing (黃取榮) was sentenced to 10 years in prison, while Ho Jen-chieh (何仁傑), a former assistant to then-minister of foreign affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), received eight years and two months.
Chiu Shih-yuan (邱世元), the former deputy director of the DPP’s Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, received six years and two months, and former Presidential Office consultant Wu Shang-yu (吳尚雨) was handed a four-year sentence.
Photo: Taipei Times file
All four rulings can be appealed.
The court also fined Huang NT$1 million (US$32,872) and confiscated or ordered the recovery of NT$4.97 million in criminal proceeds. Chiu was fined NT$50,000, with NT$2.21 million in proceeds confiscated.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on June 10 indicted the four for leaking and relaying sensitive information under the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法).
They were also charged earlier this year with contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法) by providing government secrets to China, and money laundering under the Money Laundering Control Act (洗錢防制法).
Meanwhile, the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office indicted Huang under the National Security Act for his alleged role in establishing extensive espionage networks, though the trial is ongoing.
Huang, a former assistant to New Taipei City Councilor Lee Yu-tien (李余典) from 2003 regularly traveled to China to sell tea and study at Jinan University, where he met two intelligence officers from the Central Military Commission, prosecution documents showed.
He was later recruited as a spy and provided with a work phone with a one-way data transmission app disguised as a gaming app, prosecutors said.
In 2017, he recruited Chiu, taking him on trips to Bangkok and Macau in 2023 and last year to meet Chinese intelligence officers, they said.
Chiu then asked Wu Shang-yu for sensitive information related to then-vice president William Lai’s (賴清德) official visits to Paraguay and his campaign travel schedule, prosecutors said.
In 2022, Huang recruited Ho to provide records of conversations between Joseph Wu and foreign envoys or dignitaries, details of the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade pact and Taiwan’s emergency measures after the severing of diplomatic ties, they said.
Huang then compiled the classified information provided by Chiu and Ho and transmitted it via the encoded gaming app, they said.
Huang received more than NT$6.07 million in payments from the Chinese Communist Party, including NT$900,000 in cash seized in a search of his residence, while Chiu was paid more than NT$2.21 million, prosecutors found.
The two were paid tens of thousands of New Taiwan dollars quarterly, and received holiday bonuses worth tens of thousands of NT dollars, they found.
The payments were funneled through accounts of relatives and friends in China, then laundered back to Taiwan via underground remittances, prosecutors said.
Wu Shang-yu and Ho were found not to have obtained any illicit proceeds.
All four were expelled from the DPP in May.
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