TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — No signs of a data leak have been identified in a National Health Insurance (NHI) case that has snowballed to involve allegations of sensitive data being sold to China, a preliminary probe has found.

The National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) said on Thursday (Jan. 19) that Hsieh Yu-lien (謝玉蓮), an employee who made over 130,000 queries in 2018, accessed the data so that an assessment could be conducted on how a change in pension rules for public servants may affect the income of the administration.

No evidence has indicated that the data was stolen and stored on USB flash drives, the NHI stressed. Investigation into the 350,000 queries by another employee, surnamed Li (李), is still ongoing, it added.

The scale of the combined queries and the fact that the files involve information about personnel in Taiwan’s intelligence circles have attributed to the complexity of the case.

Suggestions that the country’s national security could be endangered are rife after Yeh Feng-ming (葉逢明), a retired NHIA chief secretary, was found to have visited China multiple times, each time followed by suspicious cash inflows. Mirror Media alleged that he has amassed a fortune of NT$1 billion (US$32.9 million) in the bank accounts of his family members from selling NHI data to China.

The administration said NHIA employees’ purview of accessing NHI data has been adjusted following the incident. Efforts are being made to beef up its information security practices, including stricter protocols to access and handle data.