Retired Taiwanese air force captain indicted for gathering data on intelligence officers for China

Prosecutors in Taoyuan on Tuesday, 6 October, indicted a 77-year-old retired Republic of China Air Force captain and his 47-year-old son on charges linked to collecting personal information about two Taiwanese intelligence officers and passing it to a contact in China. The father, surnamed Fei, is accused of espionage; his son, a real-estate agent, is accused of illegally using personal data to help him.

Later on Tuesday evening the Taoyuan District Court ordered that Fei remain in detention for three months, starting the same day, and that he be barred from receiving visitors or correspondence while the case proceeds to trial.

From air force supply officer to township head

According to prosecutors, Fei served in the 5th Supply Group of the air force's 5th Wing, starting as a second lieutenant aircraft maintenance officer and rising to captain before leaving the service in October 1976. He later changed his name. From the start of 2021 he served as the head of a township in China's Hebei Province, prosecutors said, without identifying the locality.

Prosecutors allege that in January 2024 a man in China who called himself Gao Jinli instructed Fei, in exchange for an unspecified payment, to gather the occupation, vehicle details, home address and workplace of an intelligence officer working for an unnamed Taiwanese government agency. That information had been classified as a general official secret, CNA reported.

Fei allegedly hired a private investigator, who did not know the purpose of the job, to follow the officer and record the officer's movements, workplace and driving patterns. Prosecutors say he also had his son use the real-estate company's internal system to pull records of every property registered in the officer's name, and then handed the material to Gao. In July 2024 Gao allegedly asked Fei to profile a second intelligence officer, and Fei used the same methods again.

Investigation and charges

Prosecutors said they opened the investigation immediately because the case touched on national security and on the personal safety of intelligence personnel. The case was handled by prosecutor Lin Yi-wei of the Taoyuan office's national security unit, who directed a task force made up of the Ministry of National Defense Military Police Command's Shilin military police unit and police from Taipei's Wenshan First Precinct and the Taoyuan Precinct. Investigators searched Fei's home on 17 August and took him into custody, and a court then approved holding him incommunicado while his son and other witnesses were questioned.

Fei was charged under the National Intelligence Work Act with espionage, including collecting, probing and disclosing the identities and movements of intelligence personnel to people in mainland China. He also faces charges under the National Security Act for collecting and delivering official secret documents and electronic records for the mainland side, and under the Personal Data Protection Act. His son was charged only under the data protection law. The case was filed for trial under the Citizen Judges Act, which puts serious criminal cases before panels that include lay judges.

Fei denied the allegations, saying that his telephone number and personal information had been misused by someone else, according to the Liberty Times and the Taipei Times.

Court cites flight and tampering risks

In extending his detention, the court said the evidence showed strong grounds for suspicion and that the offences he is accused of carry a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison. It said Fei's long record of close dealings with China gave sufficient reason to believe he could flee.

The judges also found that Fei had deleted an alleged accomplice's contact details and their chat records before investigators approached him, which pointed to a risk that he would destroy evidence, and that his account of events differed sharply from witness testimony, raising the risk of collusion with others. Fei can apply within 10 days to have the order revoked or changed.