An Australian politician whose home and office were raided by the federal police and an intelligence agency said the probe was part of a foreign interference investigation focused on China and that he was not a suspect and had done nothing wrong.
Australia in 2018 passed foreign interference legislation, spurred in part by a classified Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) report on Chinese influence activity, sparking anger from Beijing.
On Friday morning, federal police searched New South Wales (NSW) state politician Shaoquett Moselmane’s home and parliamentary office in an investigation that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison linked to foreign interference.
Photo: AP
“The investigation is into certain other people allegedly advancing the goals of a foreign government, namely the People’s Republic of China,” Moselmane told a news conference yesterday.
“My allegiance is first and foremost to Australia,” Moselmane said.
An ASIO representative on Friday said the agency had conducted “search warrant activity” in Sydney as part of an investigation that “does not relate to any specific threat to the community.” ASIO did not provide any further details of the raids or the reason they took place.
Moselmane earlier this year attracted criticism from fellow Australian politicians for praising Chinese President Xi Jinping’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I have done nothing wrong,” Moselmane said.
Moselmane is a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) opposition in NSW.
“I have no access or knowledge ... on any of the laws or secrets of the state. Nor was there any campaign on my part to change the ALP’s China policy,” he said.
Moselmane said that while there had been much talk about his travels to China, he had never been on a Chinese government-sponsored trip.
He said that six out of nine trips he had taken to China involved the delivery of wheelchairs to children for a charity he was involved in and that he had paid for his airfares and accommodation.
Moselmane said he was someone who spoke up for the Chinese community, as well as the “downtrodden,” including Palestinians and Rohingya Muslims.
He said he had questioned China’s representative in Australia directly about the treatment of Uighurs in China.
Australia’s ties with China, its largest trading partner, have become strained after Canberra pushed for an international inquiry into the source and spread of the coronavirus that first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
China has imposed dumping tariffs on Australian barley, suspended some beef imports and warned its students and tourists against travel to the country, citing racism accusations.
Australia believes China is behind a spate of recent cyberattacks, three sources familiar with the government’s thinking said earlier this month. Beijing has dismissed the suggestion.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS