- Two Chinese-Americans were arrested for allegedly
operating a secret police station
on behalf of the Chinese government
in the heart of New York City.
One of them, 61-year-old Lu Jianwang
was seen leaving a Brooklyn federal courthouse on Monday,
after he was released on bond.
On the far left in this court sketch
is 59-year-old Chen Jinping.
The pair face charges of conspiring to act as agents
of Beijing without informing US authorities
and obstructing justice.
In addition, federal prosecutors also on Monday
unveiled charges for many others suspected of harassing
US-based Chinese dissidents.
According to authorities, Lu and Chen worked from an office
in a nondescript building near the Manhattan Bridge,
before it closed in 2022.
The office described itself as a gathering spot for people
from China's Fujian Province.
The sites appeared to help Chinese nationals
with paperwork, like renewing their driver's licenses.
But US Attorney Breon Peace said on Monday,
there was more beneath the surface.
BREON PEACE: The secret police station appears to have
had a more sinister use.
On at least one occasion, an official
with the Chinese national police directed one of the defendants,
a US citizen, who worked at the secret police station
to help locate a pro-democracy activist of Chinese descent
living in California.
In other words, the Chinese national police
appear to have been using the station to track
a US resident on US soil.
- Once they got whiff the FBI was onto them,
Lu and Chen deleted their communications
with a Chinese government official, which they
later admitted to FBI agents.
The charges also state Lu tried to persuade a Chinese dissident
to return to China in 2018.
The victim reported he was repeatedly harassed,
his family in the US received threats of violence,
and Chinese officers harassed his family in China.
US prosecutors on Monday also unveiled charges
for 42 other Chinese nationals.
They include 34 public security officers,
belonging to a task force allegedly operating
as a troll farm, creating fake profiles
to harass and threaten dissidents
and activists online.
And eight Chinese government officials
are now listed as defendants in a case
announced in 2020, charging a former China-based executive
of Zoom with disrupting video meetings commemorating
the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest, which
is a taboo subject in China.
Beijing's embassy in Washington has yet to respond
to a request for comment.
Last October, charges were unsealed
against seven Chinese nationals alleged
to be part of a state-sponsored campaign
to strongarm dissidents to repatriate to China.
In November, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Senate
committee, he was very concerned about the presence
of stations in other US cities like the alleged
one in New York.