The U.S. Department of Justice revealed Monday that it has charged two Chinese intelligence officials with obstruction of justice, accusing them of attempting to steal files and other information relating to a U.S. investigation into a Chinese telecommunications company.
The two officials ― Guochun He, who also goes by “Dong He” and “Jacky He,” and Zheng Wang, also known as “Zen Wang” ― remain at large.
“As these cases demonstrate, the government of China sought to interfere with the rights and freedoms of individuals in the United States and to undermine our judicial system that protects those rights. They did not succeed,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a Monday press conference.
As alleged by the Justice Department, the two Chinese officials sought to sabotage the ongoing probe when they tried recruiting a U.S. law enforcement employee to spy on the investigation, at times contacting the employee over public pay phones and offering bribes in bitcoin.
DOJ says that the employee ― who in fact was working under FBI supervision to deceive He and Wang ― accepted $61,000 from one of them, in exchange for what the Chinese official believed to be documents related to the investigation.
The case demonstrates that Chinese agents “will not hesitate to break the law and to violate international norms in the process,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said at Garland’s press conference.
Monday’s charges do not state the name of the Chinese company involved in the investigation, but context from the filing indicates it to be Huawei, the world’s largest provider of telecommunications equipment. The U.S. previously charged Huawei with bank fraud, racketeering conspiracy and plots to steal trade secrets ― an effort that the company dismissed as “political persecution, plain and simple.”
Garland also announced charges against seven Chinese nationals accused of “participating in a scheme to cause the forced repatriation of a [Chinese] national residing in the United States,” according to a DOJ statement. Two of the people charged, Quanzhong An and Guangyang An, have been arrested.
DOJ said that four other Chinese nationals, three of whom work for the country’s Ministry of State Security, were also charged for their alleged involvement in a “long-running intelligence campaign targeting individuals in the United States to act as agents of the PRC.”