Manhattan man pleads guilty to helping establish secret Chinese police station in NYC
NEW YORK– A Manhattan resident has pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting establish a secret police station in New York City on behalf of the Chinese government.
Chen Jinping, 60, pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court in Brooklyn to conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government.
Matthew Olsen, an assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, said Chen admitted in court his role in “boldly setting up a black police precinct” in Manhattan and in trying to cover up the effort when he was approached by the FBI.
“This illegal police station was not opened in the interest of public safety, but to further the nefarious and repressive objectives of the People’s Republic of China, which directly violate US sovereignty,” he said in a statement, referring to the People’s Republic China.
Prosecutors say Chen and his co-defendant, Lu Jianwang, opened and operated a local branch of China’s Ministry of Public Security in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood in early 2022.
The office, which took up an entire floor of the building, performed basic services such as helping Chinese citizens renew their Chinese driver’s licenses, but also identified pro-democracy activists living in the U.S., federal authorities said.
The clandestine Chinese police operation was shut down in the fall of 2022 due to an FBI investigation. But in an apparent attempt to hinder the federal investigation, Chen and Lu deleted communications with a Chinese government official to whom they reported from their phones, prosecutors said.
It is believed that China is operating such secret police posts in North America, Europe and other places where there are Chinese communities. However, the country does have that denied that they were police stationsand says they exist primarily to provide citizen services such as renewing driver’s licenses.
The arrest of Chen and Lu in April 2023 was part of this a series of prosecutions by the Department of Justice aimed at cracking down on “transnational repression,” in which foreign governments like China seek to identify, intimidate and silence dissidents in the US
Lawyers for Chen and Lu did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on Wednesday. Chen faces up to five years in prison at his May 30 sentencing.
Lu, who is due back in court in February, had a long-standing relationship with Chinese law enforcement officials, according to prosecutors.
They say the Bronx resident, who was also known as Harry Lu, helped harass and threaten a Chinese fugitive living in the U.S. over the years, and also worked on behalf of the Chinese government to locate a pro-democracy activist in California.
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Succeed Philip Marcelo twitter.com/philmarcelo.