A Singapore man pleaded guilty to using his political consulting in the United States as a front to collect information for Chinese intelligence, according to the United States Department of Justice.
In a statement Friday, the department said Jun Wei Yeo, who is also known as Dickson Yeo, filed his statement in federal court in Washington, DC on a charge of illegally operating as a foreign agent.
The department said Yeo was “central” in a Chinese government scheme to obtain confidential information from American citizens.
“In response to the tasks of his Chinese intelligence contacts, Yeo worked to detect and evaluate Americans with access to valuable non-public information, including the US military and government employees with high-level security clearances,” he said.
He then paid some of those people to write reports that apparently were for his clients in Asia, but were instead sent to the Chinese government, the department added.
The guilty plea comes as the United States cracks down on alleged Chinese espionage, including visa fraud charges against four Chinese scientists who investigators say concealed their ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston on the accusation. theft of intellectual property.
In addition to allegations of espionage, the relationship between the US and China has deteriorated on a variety of issues, including the new coronavirus pandemic and Beijing’s policies in the South China Sea, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang.
China has dismissed charges of closing the Houston consulate as “malicious slander” and urged the United States to “create the necessary conditions to get the bilateral relationship back on track.”
Alan Kohler Jr, deputy director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, said the Yeo case was “yet another reminder that China is relentless in its pursuit of technology and political information from the United States to advance its own interests.”
In a “statement of fact” filed with the court and signed by Yeo, he admitted that he was fully aware that he was working for Chinese intelligence, met with agents dozens of times, and received special treatment when he traveled to China.
Yeo, who was arrested in November last year, was recruited by Chinese intelligence while working as an academic at the National University of Singapore. He had researched and written about China’s “Belt and Road” initiative to expand its global business networks.
According to his LinkedIn page, he worked as a political risk analyst focused on China and ASEAN countries, saying he was “uniting North America with Beijing, Tokyo and Southeast Asia.”
In the US, according to the court filing, Chinese intelligence ordered Yeo to open a bogus consultancy and offer jobs.
He received more than 400 resumes, 90 percent of which came from U.S. military or government personnel.
|
Trump hints at closing more Chinese consulates as China steams (2:33) |
According to court documents, Yeo gave his Chinese manipulators resumes that he thought they would find interesting.
He said he had recruited several people to work with him, targeting those who admitted financial difficulties.
They included a civilian working on the air force’s F-35B stealth fighter-bomber project, a Pentagon army officer with experience in Afghanistan, and a State Department official, all of whom were paid up to $ 2,000 to write reports for Yeo.
Yeo was “using professional networking sites and a bogus consulting firm to attract Americans who might be of interest to the Chinese government,” Deputy Attorney General John Demers said in a statement.
“This is yet another example of the Chinese government exploiting the openness of American society,” he said.
SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
.
