Singaporean pleads guilty on US to doing work for Chinese intelligence
A good Singaporean pleaded guilty Friday to using his political consultancy in the usa as a front to accumulate information for Chinese intelligence, the united states Justice Department announced.
Jun Wei Yeo, also referred to as Dickson Yeo, entered his plea found in federal court found in Washington to 1 charge of operating illegally as a good foreign agent.
In the plea, Yeo admitted to doing work between 2015 and 2019 for Chinese intelligence "to identify and determine Americans with access to valuable non-public information, including US military and government employees with high-level security clearances."
It said Yeo paid some of those individuals to create reports that were ostensibly for his clients in Asia, but sent instead to the Chinese government.
The guilty plea was announced days after the US ordered China to close its consulate in Houston, labelling it a hub of spying and operations to steal US technology and intellectual property.
The US in addition has arrested four Chinese academics in recent weeks, charging them with lying on visa applications about their ties to the People's Liberation Army.
In a "statement of facts" submitted to the court and signed by Yeo, he admitted he was fully aware he was working for Chinese intelligence, interacting with agents dozens of times and being given special treatment when he traveled to China.
The plea announcement came five weeks after an indictment of Yeo was unsealed, cryptically accusing him of acting illegally as an agent of an unspecified foreign government.
He had been arrested after flying to america in November 2019.
Yeo was recruited by Chinese intelligence while working as a great academic in the National University of Singapore.
He previously researched and wrote about China's "Belt and Road" initiative to expand its global commercial systems.
Regarding to his LinkedIn page, he worked while a political risk analyst focused on China and ASEAN countries, saying he was "bridging THE UNITED STATES with Beijing, Tokyo and Southeast Asia."
In america, the court filing said, Yeo was directed by Chinese intelligence to start a fake consultancy and provide jobs.
He received a lot more than 400 resumes, 90 percent of which were from US military or perhaps government personnel with security clearances.
Yeo gave his Chinese handlers the resumes that he thought they would find interesting, based on the court documents.
He said he previously recruited a amount of people to work with him, targetting those that admitted to financial difficulties.
They included a civilian focusing on the Air Force's F-35B stealth fighter-bomber project, a Pentagon army officer with Afghanistan experience, and a State Department official, most of whom were paid around $2,000 for writing reports for Yeo.
Yeo was "working with career networking sites and a false consulting firm to lure Americans who might be of interest to the Chinese government," said Assistant Attorney General John Demers found in a statement.
"This is just one more exemplory case of the Chinese government's exploitation of the openness of American society," he said. -- AFP
