(NewsGlobal.com)- Officials from the Justice Department unsealed charges on Monday against 13 Chinese operatives involved in three different influence campaigns. Among those charged are two intelligence officers accused of attempting to obstruct a federal criminal investigation into the Chinese-based telecommunications company Huawei.
Dong He, also known as Guochun He, and Zheng Wang, also known as Zen Wang, were accused of leading an effort to steal files and other information from the United States Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, New York, which was related to the ongoing federal criminal investigation and prosecution of Huawei. Federal authorities said that the obstruction case represented a stunning attempted intervention in the United States criminal justice system.
The company’s name was not mentioned in any of the court records; nevertheless, someone familiar with the situation revealed that it was Huawei.
It is believed that the suspects, who are still at large, offered a bribe in the form of 41,000 Bitcoin to a member of the United States government who, in reality, was functioning as a double agent for the FBI.
Attorney General Merrick Garland stated that the accused believed that they had successfully recruited the United States government employee as an asset. However, it turned out that they drafted a double agent working for the FBI.
The other two cases concerned efforts to coerce the return to China of a Chinese national living in the United States, as well as a long-running intelligence operation by the Chinese government to recruit people living in the United States to work as agents for the Chinese government.
Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, said that each case exposes the Chinese government’s flagrant violation of international rules. As they strive to spread their authoritarian ideology around the world, they do it by breaking international laws in blatant violation. They make it a point to suppress everyone who fights back against their thievery, whether it be individuals, companies, or governments, in the same way, that they attempt to stop anyone who resists their various aggressions.
Wray stated that the obstruction of justice investigation was “another example… to give underhanded help to one of their corporations accused of infringing our intellectual property laws – and deny justice to that company’s victims.”
