A Manhattan resident has pleaded guilty to helping establish a secret police station in New York City on behalf of the Chinese government.
Chen Jinping (陳金平), 60, in Brooklyn Federal Court on Wednesday pleaded guilty on a single count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government.
US Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said Chen admitted in court to his role in “audaciously establishing an undeclared police station” in Manhattan and attempting to conceal the effort when approached by the FBI.
Photo: AFP / US District Court Eastern District New York / HANDOUT
“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] PRC in direct violation of American sovereignty,” he said in statement.
Prosecutors said Chen and his codefendant, Lu Jianwang (盧建旺), opened and operated a local branch of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood starting in early 2022.
The office, which occupied an entire floor of the building, performed basic services, such as helping Chinese citizens renew their Chinese driver’s licenses, but also identified pro-democracy activists living in the US, federal authorities said.
The clandestine Chinese police operation was shuttered in the fall of 2022 amid an FBI investigation. However, in an apparent effort to obstruct the federal probe, Chen and Lu deleted from their phones communications with a Chinese government official they reported to, prosecutors said.
China is believed to be operating such secretive police outposts in North America, Europe and other places where there are Chinese communities. However, Beijing has denied that they are police stations, saying that they exist mainly to provide citizen services such as renewing driver’s licenses.
The arrest of Chen and Lu in April last year was part of a series of US Department of Justice prosecutions aimed at cracking down on “transnational repression,” in which foreign governments such as China work to identify, intimidate and silence dissidents in the US.
Lawyers for Chen and Lu declined to comment on Wednesday. Chen faces up to five years in prison at his sentencing on May 30.
Lu, who is due back in court in February, had a longstanding relationship with Chinese law enforcement officials, prosecutors said.
Over the years, Lu helped harass and threaten a Chinese fugitive living in the US and worked to locate a pro-democracy activist in California on behalf of the Chinese government, they said.
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