A former Presidential Office official has been sentenced to two years in prison by the Taiwan High Court for leaking state secrets to China.
Wang Ren-bing (王仁炳) was found guilty on Friday of passing confidential information about President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) May 2008 inauguration to Chinese intelligence operatives.
Chen Pin-jen (陳品仁), a former aide of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Liao Kuo-tung (廖國棟), was sentenced to eight months in prison for delivering the confidential information Wang gave him to China.
The two men were found guilty of violating the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), but can still appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, the high court said.
The ruling said Wang copied confidential documents from 2004 to 2008 when he worked under then-Presidential Office deputy secretaries-general Chen Che-nan (陳哲男), Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) and Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), when then-Democratic Progressive Party president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was in power.
Wang and Chen Pin-jen handed over seven confidential documents, including notes from a meeting between Chen Shui-bian and a US official, the ruling said.
Chen Pin-jen also collected information on Taiwan’s UN bids, lists of Taiwanese athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and information on Taiwanese legislators visiting China, the ruling added.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
RSS