Ex-Army colonel who spied for China sentenced to 7.5 years in prison
ROC Central News Agency
02/24/2023 10:12 PM
Taipei, Feb. 24 (CNA) The Taiwan Kaohsiung District Court said Friday it had handed down a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence to a retired Army colonel found guilty of corruption for taking money to provide information to China.
The term given to 49-year-old Hsiang Te-en (向德恩) was less than the 12-year maximum sought by prosecutors.
The district court also stripped the former head of the Kaohsiung-based Army Infantry Training Command's Operations Research and Development Division of his political and civil rights for four years and ordered him to surrender NT$560,000 (US$18,332) obtained through espionage activities.
According to the indictment, Hsiang began receiving monthly payments of NT$40,000 in late 2019 from a former news reporter Shao Wei-chiang (邵維強) to provide classified information to Beijing.
The indictment stated that the two men first met at Hsiang's wedding in 2011. Hsiang originally wanted to file for retirement from the military in 2018, but Shao persuaded Hsiang to stay and steal sensitive information for a fixed monthly payment.
Between Oct. 31, 2019, and January 2022, Hsiang accepted a total of NT$560,000 from Shao in exchange for information that he had obtained from the military, according to prosecutors.
To prove his loyalty to China, Shao asked Hsiang to hold a handwritten note pledging his allegiance to China while wearing his military uniform for a photograph in January 2020, prosecutors said in the indictment.
The note stated: "I, Hsiang Te-en, hereby pledge to support cross-strait peaceful unification. I will do my best at my current post to fulfill the glorious task of pushing for peaceful unification for the motherland."
Hsiang's alleged handler Shao, a former Army lieutenant who served as Taipei-based China Television Company's Kinmen correspondent between 1993 and July 2019, has been charged with bribery, banking, and national security offenses by prosecutors in Kinmen.
(By Hung Hsueh-kuang and Chao Yen-shiang)
Enditem/ASG
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