A former air force captain has been arrested on charges of colluding with Chinese intelligence operatives, the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said on Monday.
Chen Kuo-wei (陳國瑋) was turned over to the office for alleged violations of the National Intelligence Services Act (國家情報工作法), it said, adding that the Taiwan High Court ruled to detain him incommunicado.
Senior Ministry of National Defense officials said Chen might have colluded with Chinese intelligence after his failed attempt to conduct business in China.
Chen, 40, retired as a captain in the air force’s logistics and maintenance division 15 years ago and has since been traveling to Shanghai to try to start his own business, they said.
While Chen had no access to classified materials or intelligence during his time in the air force, most of his friends in the military are now colonels or lieutenant colonels, making him a target for Chinese intelligence, the ministry said.
It said Chen was asked by the Chinese to persuade his contacts in the military to supply information and it was during such an attempt that he came in contact with a person working in the Military Intelligence Bureau.
The person reported the incident to his superiors, because he was concerned that Chen’s overtures might be an attempt to obtain military information and build an intelligence network in Taiwan for the Chinese, the ministry said.
The bureau and prosecutors monitored Chen’s activities for some time and, deciding that they had collected enough information on Chen to build a case, obtained permission to detain him on Sunday when he returned to Taiwan, allegedly to collect information from his sources, the ministry said.
The bureau declined to comment on whether Chen had succeeded in forming an intelligence network in the military, saying that the case has been turned over to the prosecutors’ office for investigation.
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