Taiwan charges two senior aides with spying for China

Chen Shui-bian

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Two senior Taiwanese government aides arrested last January have been formally charged with violating Taiwan’s national security law by providing Chinese officials with classified information. Wang Ren-bing, a former senior advisor at the Office of the President, and Chen Pin-jen, a legislative aide at the Taiwanese Parliament, were arrested two months ago, when Taiwanese counterintelligence officials conducted early-morning raids at the two aides’ homes and offices. The authorities, who found over one hundred copies of restricted and classified government documents in Wang’s office, allege that Wang routinely gave documents to Chen, who then handed them over to a Chinese government agent, identified as Tan Gang, during frequent trips to China, or via encrypted facsimile dispatches. Taiwanese prosecutors claim that the Wagn-Chen spy ring was active from 2006 to 2008, that is, during the last two years of Chen Shui-bian’s Presidency. President Chen was a staunch advocate of Taiwanese independence, whose fierce rhetoric repeatedly brought Taipei at loggerheads with Beijing. For nearly three years, however, the two aides reportedly provided China with President Chen’s visits with foreign leaders, his government’s diplomatic initiatives abroad, as well as inside information about Taiwan’s political and economic rewards to its diplomatic supporters around the world. Last January’s arrests marked the first time in Taiwanese history that the Office of the President was raided by the authorities, as well as the first-ever espionage indictment of a Taiwanese Presidential aide. Both Wang Ren-bing and Chen Pin-jen are reportedly collaborating with Taiwanese counterintelligence officers. Prosecutors have asked for three-year jail terms for the two former aides. This is the second spy scandal to have cast a shadow on Taiwan’s relations with China in recent months. In February, the Taiwanese government announced the arrest of four Taiwanese civil servants caught spying on behalf of the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the intelligence agency of the People’s Republic of China. The four had apparently been blackmailed by Chinese intelligence officers after they were covertly photographed walking into red-light-district bars in mainland China. The four civil servants were warned by Chinese agents that copies of the photographs would be sent to their families and employers unless they agreed to collaborate.