The Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garlandaccused this Monday China to try”undermine the judicial system” of his country and revealed that he has filed charges against 13 officials and alleged intelligence agents Chinese accused of to spy and committing abuses on behalf of the Beijing government on US soil.
Among the defendants are two alleged Chinese spies whom the US attributes to having interfered in a federal investigation in New York against a telecommunications companythat the authorities did not identify, but that the US media indicated that it is huawei.
Garland made the announcement at a news conference accompanied by Justice Department number two Lisa O. Monaco, FBI Director General Christopher Wray, and Deputy Attorney General for Homeland Security Matthew Olsen.
According to the indictment, in 2019 these two defendants asked an infiltrated FBI agent to steal confidential information about the case opened in the US against a Chinese-based telecommunications company. The two alleged Chinese spies thought they had managed to recruit an American official as an asset, when in fact what they were doing was recruiting a double agent of the FBI at the service of the United States.
Garland added that the alleged Chinese spies paid a bribery to the double agent to obtain non-public data, such as files from the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, to access the prosecution’s strategy and confidential information about the witnesses in the case against the Chinese telecommunications firm. The FBI agent provided them with documents that were apparently true, when in fact they had been prepared by the US government to accuse them of espionage.
US technology
On the other hand, the US attorney general pointed out that in another court in the District of New Jersey another indictment has been made public against four individuals, of which three are Chinese Intelligence personnel, for allegedly “conspiring to act in the US as agents illegal on behalf of a foreign government.
“The indictment alleges that between 2008 and 2018 the defendants used a purported Chinese academic institute as a cover to recruit individuals into the US and other Chinese intelligence missions,” Garland explained. Among other missions they supposedly tried to achieve US technology and equipment to send it to China and tried to disrupt protests on US soil.
To these two open cases is added a third, also before the Eastern District Court of New York, in which the Washington Executive has filed charges against seven individuals who allegedly worked for Beijing “for threatening, harassing and forcing a resident in the US to return to China.
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“Last Thursday we arrested two of the defendants,” Garland said, adding that China often locates suspected fugitives from the country in other parts of the world to force them to return to its territory.
“As these cases demonstrate, the Chinese government sought to interfere in the rights and freedoms of individuals in the United States and undermining our judicial system that protects those rights,” said Garland, who assured that the Department of Justice “will not tolerate” efforts by any foreign power to undermine law enforcement.