NEW YORK — Brooklyn federal prosecutors Monday arrested and charged two men with operating an “undeclared overseas police station” in lower Manhattan on behalf of the Chinese government.
Prosecutors charged the men, Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping, with conspiring to act as agents of China as well as obstructing justice by deleting their communications with an official for China’s Ministry of Public Security.
Last year, the human rights group Safeguard Defenders accused China of operating more than 100 overseas police outposts in numerous foreign countries. The stations ostensibly provide diplomatic services to Chinese citizens abroad but also covertly harass Chinese dissidents, the group said.
The station identified Monday occupied an entire floor of an office building in Manhattan’s Chinatown before closing in 2022, according to prosecutors. During its operation, it was tasked with “helping locate a person of interest” to the Chinese government, prosecutors said.
The defendants were set to appear in court Monday afternoon.
Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said the case “reveals the Chinese government’s flagrant violation of our nation’s sovereignty.”
“Such a police station has no place here in New York City — or any American community,” Peace said in a statement Monday.
Brooklyn federal prosecutors also unsealed two other related cases Monday: one charging 34 officers of China’s national police with harassing Chinese nationals in New York and elsewhere in the U.S., and another charging eight Chinese government officials with directing an employee of a U.S. telecommunications company to remove Chinese dissidents from its platform.
Prosecutors described the 34 officers as having created a “troll farm” consisting of thousands of fake online personas on social media sites, including Twitter, to target Chinese nationals living in the U.S. who held political views in opposition to those of the People’s Republic of China or who promoted democracy in China.
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