A retired military police officer who was on the security detail of former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) was yesterday indicted for spying for China, the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office said.
The office said it had charged Major Wang Hung-ju (王鴻儒), 46, with violating the National Security Act (國家安全法) after he was found to be involved in espionage.
Wang had been assigned by the National Security Bureau (NSB) as one of Lu’s bodyguards during the 2000 presidential campaign. After his retirement from the Special Service Command Center in 2003, he began a business career in China.
In March, he was arrested at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport before flying to China.
He had been suspected of espionage by the NSB and the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau for a long period of time before his arrest in March, when he was detained incommunicado.
Wang made contact with Chinese officials, for whom he agreed to collect confidential information from his former colleagues, prosecutors said.
He was exposed when many of the Taiwanese he contacted refused to offer any information to him, they said.
Wang during questioning denied that he had leaked national secrets, saying that “at the rank of major, my access to national secrets was limited,” they said.
However, Wang did confess that he does not care much for law and order, they said.
Wang is the second person with a military background to be charged with spying this week, following Major General Hsieh Chia-kang (謝嘉康).
Hsieh, who is deputy commander of the Matsu Defense Command, was summoned for questioning by prosecutors on Tuesday for alleged national security breaches.
The same day, his residence in Pingtung was searched and the case was turned over to the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office in Kaohsiung for further investigation.
He was later released on bail of NT$100,000 and barred from leaving the country.
Hsieh’s case drew concern from the US over possible leaks of information about US-made missile systems.
Before being transferred to the Matsu Defense Command in January, Hsieh was the head of the Air Defense Missile Command, a post he took up in 2015.
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck off Tainan at 11:47am today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 32.3km northeast of Tainan City Hall at a depth of 7.3km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Tainan and Chiayi County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Chiayi City and County, and Yunlin County, while it was measured as 2 in Kaohsiung, Nantou County, Changhua County, Taitung County and offshore Penghu County, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of
Weather conditions across Taiwan are expected to remain stable today, but cloudy to rainy skies are expected from tomorrow onward due to increasing moisture in the atmosphere, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). Daytime highs today are expected to hit 25-27°C in western Taiwan and 22-24°C in the eastern counties of Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung, data on the CWA website indicated. After sunset, temperatures could drop to 16-17°C in most parts of Taiwan. For tomorrow, precipitation is likely in northern Taiwan as a cloud system moves in from China. Daytime temperatures are expected to hover around 25°C, the CWA said. Starting Monday, areas
Taiwan has recorded its first fatal case of Coxsackie B5 enterovirus in 10 years after a one-year-old boy from southern Taiwan died from complications early last month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. CDC spokesman Lo Yi-chun (羅一鈞) told a news conference that the child initially developed a fever and respiratory symptoms before experiencing seizures and loss of consciousness. The boy was diagnosed with acute encephalitis and admitted to intensive care, but his condition deteriorated rapidly, and he passed away on the sixth day of illness, Lo said. This also marks Taiwan’s third enterovirus-related death this year and the first severe
A Taiwanese software developer has created a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model to help people use AI without exposing sensitive data, project head Huang Chung-hsiao (黃崇校) said yesterday. Huang, a 55-year-old coder leading a US-based team, said that concerns over data privacy and security in popular generative AIs such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek motivated him to develop a personal AI assistant named “Mei.” One of the biggest security flaws with cloud-based algorithms is that users are required to hand over personal information to access the service, giving developers the opportunity to mine user data, he said. For this reason, many government agencies and
RSS