Li Kai-ping was dismissed from the Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday and faces charges of leaking state secrets for sending bureau reports on Falun Gong to China via the Internet, a Justice Ministry spokesman said.

The spokesman said bureau agents investigated Li after receiving a tip-off. The spokesman declined to say what Li’s motives were or who the recipients were.

Taiwan newspapers said Li sent the information to a Taiwan investor friend in China this year and would appeal against his dismissal. Li could not be reached for comment.

Falun Gong is legal in Taiwan but banned in China as an “[…]” in 1999 after adherents shocked authorities by besieging the leadership compound in Beijing demanding recognition.

The sect, which mixes Buddhism with traditional Chinese breathing exercises, says up to 1,600 followers have been killed in China in an ensuing crackdown. Beijing says only a handful have died, mostly from suicide or natural causes.

Taipei and Beijing have been spying on each other since they split at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.

In June, Taiwan authorities arrested a businessman and his navy sergeant son for spying for China.

The Chinese executed a major general and a senior colonel in 1999 for spying for Taiwan in the biggest espionage scandal of China’s Communist era.

In Taiwan’s biggest spying scandal, a vice defence minister was executed in the early 1950s for providing China with the island’s combat plans.

Beijing considers the democratic island of 23 million a breakaway province that must be returned to the fold, by force if necessary.

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