TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — China wanted three former legislative aides to provide them with President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) medical records, reports said Thursday (Aug. 13).

The three, named as Chen Wei-jen (陳惟仁), Lee Yi-hsien (李易諴), and Lin Yung-ta (林雍達), were charged Thursday with violations of the National Security Act related to the formation of spy rings. Apart from stealing National Health Insurance (NHI) information about Tsai, they had also been asked to hand over data about the election campaigns of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Kuomintang (KMT), CNA reported.

Chen and Lin visited Macau in 2012 to meet with a Chinese official using the name Huang Guanlong (黃冠龍), the Taipei District Prosecutors Office said in its indictment. Two years later, Chen learned that Lee, a journalist at the time, had financial problems, so he invited him to meet with Huang in Guangzhou and recruited him into the organization.

The group persuaded a KMT worker to tell the Chinese agent all he knew about the party, but then he never contacted them again. In return for NT$200,000 (US$6,800), another KMT aide supplied Huang with documents related to party-related cross-strait meetings.

However, an attempt at having a reporter obtain information about Falun Gong activists from the National Police Agency (NPA) failed, with the journalist refusing to cooperate.

In 2017, the group met another roadblock when an IT expert refused to hack into the NHI system to obtain President Tsai’s medical files, CNA reported. Similarly, in 2018 a bodyguard for prominent DPP lawmaker Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) turned down their request to enter his study during his absence and photograph documents about the campaign for the 2020 presidential elections.