US authorities disrupt activities of people working on behalf of China

Federal authorities in the United States say they have disrupted the activities of people acting on behalf of China in the US with more than a dozen now facing charges arising from three separate cases.

US attorney general Merrick Garland said the cases demonstrated that “the government of China sought to interfere with the rights and freedoms of individuals in the United States and to undermine our judicial system that protects those rights”.

He said on Monday that over the past week the US justice department had taken several actions to disrupt criminal activity by individuals working on behalf of the government of the People’s Republic of China.

“The justice department will not tolerate attempts by any foreign power to undermine the rule of law upon which our democracy is based,” he said at a press conference in Washington.

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The cases involve alleged participation in schemes to repatriate critics of the Chinese government, obtain secret information about a US investigation into a Chinese telecom company and the recruitment of spies to act as Chinese agents in the US.

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Mr Garland said on Monday a complaint had been unsealed in the US district court for the eastern district of New York charging two suspected Chinese intelligence officers with attempting to obstruct, influence and impede a criminal prosecution of a telecommunications company based in China.

The complaint alleged that in 2019 the defendants directed a US government law enforcement agency employee to provide confidential information about a criminal prosecution of the company.

It is alleged by the justice department that one of the defendants paid about $61,000 for the information.

However, the individual they approached in the law enforcement agency was a double agent working for the US government.

Prosecutors said that at one point last year the individual passed to the defendants a purported secret document that contained information about a plan to charge and arrest executives of a Chinese telecom company in the US.

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Prosecutors did not identify the company in the court documents released on Monday. However, US media reported that the documents refer to Huawei, the Chinese phone and communication device manufacturer.

Separately, Mr Garland said federal prosecutors in New Jersey indicted four people, including three Chinese intelligence officers, with using “the cover of a purported Chinese academic institute to target, co-opt and direct individuals in the United States to further the PRC [People’s Republic of China] intelligence mission over 10 years from 2008″.

He maintained they also attempted “to procure technology and equipment from the United States and to have it shipped to China” and “stop protected first amendment activities, protests here in the United States, which would have been embarrassing for the Chinese government”.

Another case involved seven people charged with undertaking “a multiyear campaign of threats and harassment to force a US resident to return to China”, Mr Garland said. “Defendants threatened the victim saying that coming back and turning yourself in is the only way out.”

“They showed up at the home of the victim’s son in New York,” Mr Garland said. “They filed frivolous lawsuits against the victim and his son and said it would be endless misery for the defendant and son to defend themselves. And they made clear that their harassment would not stop until the victim returned to China.”