A New York resident pleaded guilty Wednesday to working as an unregistered foreign agent. Prosecutors said he helped run a “secret police station” in the city on behalf of Beijing’s efforts to crack down on Chinese dissidents abroad.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said Chen Jinping, 61, pleaded guilty to setting up a Manhattan office to inform Beijing about Chinese nationals who committed petty and often vague crimes related to fraud while overseas.
Most Chinese nationals were “persuaded to return” and faced charges after Chinese government surrogates harassed or imprisoned their family members, said Safeguard Defenders, a watchdog group that monitored the police stations globally. The “police stations” were also used to report on dissident activity opposing the regime in Beijing.
Chen admitted in his plea to destroying evidence about his correspondence with Chinese government officials over the unlawful pressure campaign.
“This illegal police station was not opened in the interest of public safety, but to further the nefarious and repressive aims of the [People’s Republic of China] in direct violation of American sovereignty,” said a statement by James Dennehy, FBI assistant director in charge.
Chinese government officials have repeatedly denied operating a string of clandestine police stations to monitor the activities of Chinese nationals living abroad.
“There is no so-called Chinese police service stations overseas at all,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a Beijing briefing late last month after Texas issued an executive order banning such outposts in the state. “China’s law enforcement agencies carry out cooperation in international law enforcement in strict accordance with international law, fully respect other countries’ laws and judicial sovereignty, and safeguard the lawful rights and interests of the suspects.”
Beijing has said the centers abroad are operated by local volunteers, not Chinese security officers, and aim to help nationals obtain needed documents and fill out driver’s license applications.
U.S. prosecutors said Chen and co-defendant Lu Jianwang established and ran the “police station” in a building in New York’s Chinatown, the first overseas police station Beijing opened in the U.S.
Mr. Lu, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of working as a foreign agent and obstruction of justice, is accused of trying to track down a pro-democracy activist on behalf of the ruling Communist Party. Prosecutors said he also intended to persuade a supposed fugitive to return to China in 2018.
The Chinese police operation was shuttered in the fall of 2022 during an FBI investigation. The Associated Press reported that prosecutors said Mr. Chen and Mr. Lu deleted communications with a Chinese government official from their phones.
In his plea, Chen acknowledged he scrubbed an online article about the police station in September 2022 so it wouldn’t embarrass the Chinese Communist Party.
Safeguard Defenders’ report from 2022 said the Chinese Ministry of Public Security was operating 110 overseas stations. Most of the offices were in Europe.
The main criminal activities the Chinese government surrogates monitored were fraud and telecommunications fraud.
Safeguard’s report said authorities contacted a Chinese woman running a restaurant in Cambodia and asked her to return to China in 2022. The woman said she was not committing fraud and was just doing business in the country.
Chinese officials warned her months later that she would be put on a telecommunications suspect list and that they would cut water and power to her mother’s home if she didn’t return. Her mother’s home was later spray-painted with the term “House of Telecom Fraud.”
When contacted by AP on Wednesday, attorneys for Chen and Mr. Lu declined to comment. Chen, who will be sentenced on May 30, faces up to five years in prison. Mr. Lu is due back in court in February.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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