Three More Held in Taiwan's Presidential Office Spy Case

TaiwanPlus News

Three more people have been linked to an ongoing investigation into espionage within Taiwan’s Presidential Office. Individuals with deep connections to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and to the president himself are being accused of spying for China.

Transcript

00:00Accusations of espionage are flying around Taiwan's presidential office.

00:05Several more people with deep connections to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party

00:09and the president himself are being accused of spying for China.

00:13Rhys Ayers is live with us in Taipei with more on this developing story.

00:18Rhys, who is being accused in this spy saga?

00:25There were three individuals identified by a report by Mirror Media, surnamed Qiu, Huang

00:32and Wu, all with various positions of authority and levels of access within the Democratic

00:39Progressive Party and also within that building behind me, the presidential office here in

00:45Taipei.

00:46They've all been accused of leaking sensitive information to China and all this comes just

00:51one day after a former aide to an ex-legislative house speaker, Yoshi Kun, was released on

00:59bail.

01:00So let's zoom in on one of the people named in that report so we can get a better sense

01:05of just how deep this goes.

01:07So Mr. Wu, he had been working for the DPP central headquarters for a long time, since

01:14before even Tsai Ing-wen, the former president, was elected in 2016.

01:19He then worked under Lai Ching-de when he was vice president in 2022.

01:25He was then carried on with the president when he assumed office in 2024, acting as

01:30an aide to the president himself.

01:33So these are people who have really direct access to the leadership of Taiwan.

01:40Now according to that report, Wu's colleagues said that soon after Lunar New Year in February,

01:46he kind of disappeared.

01:48His Facebook account was deactivated and we now know that was probably because he was

01:53being investigated.

01:55Wu and the others accused currently being held incommunicado pending the prosecutor's

02:02investigations.

02:06And has there been any response from the presidential office?

02:09All four of them were affiliated with the DPP, right?

02:14Yeah, they were indeed.

02:16The presidential office has released a rather generic statement.

02:20They said that they don't comment on any individual cases or insinuations made by politicians.

02:28And they said that anyone found spying will face severe punishment.

02:33They then went on to say that China is increasingly trying to infiltrate Taiwan, but recognized

02:40an urgent need to strengthen the country's national security legislation.

02:46This all comes less than a month after President Lai Ching-de held a press conference in the

02:53office behind me.

02:54A very serious announcement on this very issue, where he said that Taiwan needs to respond

03:01to China's growing attempts to infiltrate the country, including through recruiting

03:07political spies.

03:09And then he laid out a long series of measures that he said Taiwan must do to protect its

03:15sovereignty.

03:16The opposition, Kuomintang, have also jumped onto this story, accusing the DPP of allowing

03:23communist spies into Taiwanese politics, which is a slightly ironic twist of fate, given

03:30that it's the general perception in Taiwan that it's the KMT that have closer ties to Beijing.

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