Lu Jianwang, one of the two accused of running a clandestine police station for the benefit of China, with his lawyer Deirdre von Dornum as they leave a federal court in New York. BING GUAN (REUTERS)
Two New York residents have been detained on suspicion of operating a Chinese "secret police office" in that city, the Justice Department announced in a statement.
The two arrested, Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, face charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to act as agents of the Chinese government without declaring it to the US authorities.
In addition, in two separate cases, the New York Prosecutor's Office has filed charges against 34 and 40 Chinese officials, all of them based in their country, whom it accuses of creating false accounts on social networks to harass and try to discredit and threaten critics of Beijing. who reside on US soil to pressure them to return to China for trial there.
The clandestine police station operated from a floor in a building in Chinatown.
Chen and Lu ran their day-to-day operations, led by a Chinese police officer.
It operated, according to the Department of Justice, until the fall of last year, when the authorities became aware of the nature of that office.
It was part of a network of more than a hundred centers that the Ministry of Public Security, the Chinese Police, maintained in cities around the world -Madrid and Barcelona among them- without informing the national governments, as denounced in September of the year passed the human rights organization Safeguard Defenders in a report.
After the publication of the report, various governments -Holland, Ireland, Canada- have taken measures to stop the activities of these supposed clandestine offices, which violate the sovereignty of the countries in which they are located: the police of a country cannot act with impunity in someone else's territory.
Beijing, for its part, denies that these offices have any function other than helping its citizens abroad with bureaucratic issues related to their country of origin.
In October, after the NGO denounced the existence of that network, the FBI searched the facilities of that illegal police station.
He also questioned Lu and Chen and confiscated their phones.
Upon examination, the federal police found that both appeared to have erased the content of communications with each other and with the Chinese police officer leading them.
Both later admitted that they had removed that content when they learned of the impending appeal, according to the Justice Department.
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The prosecution claims that the indictment against Lu and Chen "reveals the flagrant violation of our country's sovereignty by the Chinese government by establishing a secret police station in the middle of New York City."
In particular, Lu had a "long relationship of trust with the Chinese police," prosecutors say.
In 2015, she participated in demonstrations against Falun Gong, a persecuted religious sect in China.
In 2018, Lu tried to persuade a person considered a fugitive in China to return to her home country.
That person reported that she had been threatened and harassed.
Four years later, the Chinese government asked Lu, who had "a longstanding relationship of trust with the Chinese police," to track down another individual, a California-based pro-democracy activist.
If convicted of acting as undeclared agents of the Chinese government, the two suspects face up to five years in prison.
The obstruction of justice charge can mean up to twenty years in prison.
"The People's Republic of China, through its repressive security apparatus, has established a secret physical presence in New York City to monitor and intimidate dissidents and critics of its government," Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said. , head of the Department of Justice's Homeland Security division.
“China's actions go far beyond the limits of acceptable state conduct.
We will firmly defend the freedoms of all those who live in our country against the threat of authoritarian repression.
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