Photo: U.S. District Court Eastern District of New York
The Department of Justice announced it arrested two Chinese nationals who allegedly set up a covert police station in New York City. "Harry" Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, were charged with conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government and obstructing justice.
Prosecutors said the two men worked with China's Ministry of Public Security to create the first overseas police station in the United States in an office building in Manhattan's Chinatown.
Operating out of the covert police station, the two men, along with several other co-conspirators, did the bidding of Chinese officials. Once they learned the FBI was investigating their actions, they destroyed communications with Chinese officials and closed down the station.
"This prosecution reveals the Chinese government's flagrant violation of our nation's sovereignty by establishing a secret police station in the middle of New York City," said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York. "As alleged, the defendants and their co-conspirators were tasked with doing the PRC's bidding, including helping locate a Chinese dissident living in the United States, and obstructed our investigation by deleting their communications. Such a police station has no place here in New York City – or any American community."
If convicted on all charges, the two men face up to 25 years in prison.
"It is simply outrageous that China's Ministry of Public Security thinks it can get away with establishing a secret, illegal police station on U.S. soil to aid its efforts to export repression and subvert our rule of law," said Acting Assistant Director Kurt Ronnow of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division. "This case serves as a powerful reminder that the People's Republic of China will stop at nothing to bend people to their will and silence messages they don't want anyone to hear. The FBI is dedicated to protecting everyone in the United States against efforts to undermine our democratic freedoms, and we'll hold any state actors – and those who help them – accountable for breaking our laws."