A police officer who was a member of a special service in charge of presidential security has been suspended and detained on suspicion of “leaking secrets,” officials said yesterday.
The man, surnamed Tsao (曹), had been on secondment from the Special Police Sixth Headquarters since May 20, when President William Lai (賴清德) took office, said Lien Ching-tzong (連慶宗), an official at the unit.
Tsao was detained on Monday last week and suspended after “a court found that Tsao’s involvement in leaking secrets was serious and there was a risk of collusion,” Lien told reporters without providing details.
Photo: Taipei Times
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) reported that prosecutors in Tainan suspected Tsao of “leaking President Lai’s private itinerary and security information to friends.”
Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said that relevant units would cooperate with judicial investigations.
“For individuals suspected of breaking the law, they not only harm the hardworking military and police teams, but also the people and the country,” she said in a statement.
Prosecutors found confidential information from secret service files, such as foreign guests who Lai received, as well as police deployment and movement routes, in the mobile phone of a suspect in another case, SET News reported.
That information was traced to Tsao, it said.
Prosecutors suspected that he might have been recruited by China to leak the president’s confidential itinerary, the SETN report said.
Four Taiwanese soldiers, including three from a military police unit in charge of security for the president’s office, were charged this month for photographing and leaking confidential information to China.
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