US arrests two suspected of running Chinese 'secret police station' in New York
Two Chinese nationals in New York were arrested by the FBI on suspicion of operating a "secret police station" in Manhattan's Chinatown on behalf of Beijing, federal prosecutors announced on Monday.
Forty-four others who remain at large were charged with targeting and intimidating Chinese dissidents in the US.
The two men - Lu Jianwang, 61, of the Bronx and Chen Jinping, 59, of Manhattan - were charged with conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government without informing US authorities, and obstruction of justice by destroying evidence of communications with an official from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS), prosecutors in Brooklyn said.
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Lu and Chen are US citizens who lead a non-profit organisation that lists its mission as providing a social gathering place for people from China's Fujian province, according to the criminal complaint.
Prosecutors said they acted under the "direction and control" of the MPS official to "do the PRC's bidding". Lu is accused of seeking to persuade someone considered to be a fugitive by China to return in 2018; of participating in counterprotests in Washington against members of an unnamed religion forbidden under Chinese law in 2015; and of helping to locate a Chinese dissident living in California in 2022.
The two defendants admitted that they deleted conversations with each other and with the MPS official after learning about an FBI investigation into the police station in October, prosecutors said. The outpost was shut down last fall after it was searched by federal agents, according to a spokesman for the federal court in Brooklyn.
The station - operated by the Fuzhou branch of the MPS - was "at the very least" providing some government services, like helping Chinese citizens renew their Chinese driver's licences, said Breon Peace, the US attorney in Brooklyn. But the law requires those operating the station to give prior notice to the US Justice Department before setting it up on US soil, the prosecutor said.
"The defendants' actions under the direction of the Chinese government are flagrant violations of American sovereignty," Peace added.
The Chinese government has denied allegations that the stations were used for nefarious purposes and said they merely provided bureaucratic assistance. The embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the charges.
In a second complaint unsealed on Monday, 34 MPS officers the Justice Department said were part of an elite task force called the "912 Special Project Working Group" were charged with conspiracy to transmit interstate threats and to commit interstate harassment.
The defendants, all residing outside the US, created thousands of fake social media accounts - including on Twitter - to harass and intimidate Chinese dissidents residing abroad, prosecutors said.
They are accused of disseminating Beijing's propaganda, attempting to recruit US-based users to their cause and interacting with online users to give the impression that they were genuine.
They also attempted to have Chinese dissidents removed from a teleconferencing platform, including by disrupting an effort to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown by posting threats against the participants through the platform's chat function, and flooding a videoconference about countering communism by "[drowning] out the meeting with loud music and vulgar screams and threats".
The third and final complaint unsealed on Monday charged 10 people, including six MPS officers and two officials with the Cyberspace Administration of China - the country's top internet watchdog - with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and conspiracy to transfer means of identification.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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