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Man pleads guilty to running ‘secret police station’ for Chinese government in Manhattan

A New York resident pleaded guilty Wednesday to working as an unregistered foreign agent after prosecutors said he helped run a “secret police station” in the city on behalf of Beijing’s efforts to crack down on Chinese dissidents abroad.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said Chen Jinping, 61, pleaded guilty to setting up a Manhattan office used to inform Beijing about Chinese nationals who committed petty and often vague crimes related to fraud while overseas.

Most Chinese nationals were “persuaded to return” and face charges after Chinese government surrogates harassed or imprisoned the dissident’s family members, according to the Safeguard Defenders watchdog group that monitored the police stations globally. The “police stations” were also used to report on dissident activity opposing the Beijing regime.

Chen admitted in his plea to destroying evidence about his correspondence with Chinese government officials over the unlawful pressure campaign. He faces up to five years behind bars when sentenced in May.

“This illegal police station was not opened in the interest of public safety, but to further the nefarious and repressive aims of the [People’s Republic of China] in direct violation of American sovereignty,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge James Dennehy said in a statement.

Chinese government officials have repeatedly denied claims that they operate a string of clandestine police stations overseas to monitor the activities of Chinese nationals living abroad.

“There is no so-called Chinese police service stations overseas at all,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a Beijing briefing late last month after Texas issued an executive order banning such outposts in the state. “China’s law enforcement agencies carry out cooperation in international law enforcement in strict accordance with international law, fully respect other countries’ laws and judicial sovereignty, and safeguard the lawful rights and interests of the suspects.”

The Chinese government has said the centers operating abroad are run by local volunteers, not Chinese security officers, and aim to help Chinese nationals obtain needed documents and fill out driver’s license applications.

U.S. prosecutors said Chen and co-defendant Lu Jianwang established and ran the “police station” based out of a building in New York City’s Chinatown, the first overseas police station Beijing had opened in the U.S.

Mr. Lu, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of working as a foreign agent and obstruction of justice, is accused of trying to track down a pro-democracy activist on behalf of the ruling Communist Party. Prosecutors also said he intended to persuade a supposed fugitive to return to China in 2018.

The alleged clandestine Chinese police operation was shuttered in the fall of 2022 amid an FBI investigation. Prosecutors say Mr. Chen and Mr. Lu deleted communications with a Chinese government official they reported to from their phones, The Associated Press reported.

In his plea, Chen acknowledged he scrubbed an online article about the police station in September 2022 so it wouldn’t come back to embarrass the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

According to Safeguard Defenders’ report from 2022, Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security was operating 110 overseas stations internationally. Most of the offices were in Europe.

The main criminal activities the Chinese government surrogates monitored were fraud and telecommunications fraud.

Safeguard’s report said authorities contacted a Chinese woman running a restaurant in Cambodia and asked her to return to China in 2022. The woman said she was not committing fraud and was just doing business in the country.

Chinese officials then warned her months later that she would be put on a telecommunications suspect list and that they would cut water and power to her mother’s home if she didn’t return. Her mother’s home was later spray-painted with the term “House of Telecom Fraud.”

When contacted by The Associated Press on Wednesday, attorneys for Chen and Mr. Lu declined to comment. Chen faces up to five years in prison at his sentencing on May 30. Mr. Lu is due back in court in February.

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