The High Court yesterday sentenced army Sergeant Sun Chu-chuan (孫楚荃) to 12 years in prison for selling military secrets for NT$67,760 to pay off debts incurred by tipping female streamers.
The verdict is not final.
Writing in the verdict, judges said that Sun served in a logistics company of a support battalion under the army’s Matsu Defense Command in Lienchiang County.
Photo: Yang Hsin-hui, Taipei Times
The man took photos of secret and top secret military material, including hard copies and digital files from June 2021 to December 2023 at his unit’s logistics center using a personal cellphone, it said.
Su sold the information in eight packages to people with accounts on Telegram identified by their handles Bei Wei (百威, possibly referring to the beer brand Budweiser), Yun Ke (“Brother Cloud,” 雲哥) and JACK JACK, they said.
Prosecutors said Su did so at the anonymous buyers’ instigation and financial records showed that he received payment in three installments, the judges said.
The court found him guilty of breaching the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條) and illegally revealing secrets related to national defense under the Criminal Code of the Armed Forces (陸海空軍刑法).
“As an active duty military service member, Sun ... has a duty to be loyal to the nation and protect the sensitive and critically important national security secrets, which he betrayed by downloading classified data and providing them to other parties in exchange for illicit profits,” the judges said.
Despite professing innocence during the investigation, the accused admitted to all of the crimes listed by prosecutors at court, they said.
The court set the accused’s sentence to 12 years after weighing the severity of the crime against his confession at court, expression of remorse and the absence of prior criminality, the judges said.
Sun was additionally deprived of the right to serve as an elected or appointed official for six years, they said.
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