Feds Arrest 2, Charge Dozens of Chinese for Aiding Beijing, 'Police Station'

Two men have been arrested on charges that they helped establish a secret police outpost in New York City on behalf of the Chinese government, and more than three dozen officers with China's national police force have been charged with using social media to harass dissidents inside the United States, the Justice Department said Monday.

"New York City is home to New York's finest: the NYPD," U.S. Attorney Breon Peace, the top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, said at a news conference announcing the arrests. "We don't need or want a secret police station in our great city."

The cases, taken together, are part of a series of Justice Department prosecutions in recent years aimed at disrupting Chinese government efforts to locate in America pro-democracy activists and others who are openly critical of Beijing's policies.

"This prosecution reveals the Chinese government's flagrant violation of our nation's sovereignty by establishing a secret police station in the middle of New York City," Peace wrote in a statement. "As alleged, the defendants and their co-conspirators were tasked with doing the PRC's bidding, including helping locate a Chinese dissident living in the United States, and obstructed our investigation by deleting their communications. Such a police station has no place here in New York City – or any American community."

One of the cases concerns a local branch of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, which operated inside an office building in Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood before closing last fall amid an FBI investigation. The two men charged with establishing the outpost were acting under the direction and control of a Chinese government official, and deleted communication with that official from their phones after becoming aware of the investigation, according to the Justice Department.

"The PRC, through its repressive security apparatus, established a secret physical presence in New York City to monitor and intimidate dissidents and those critical of its government," Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division wrote in a statement. "The PRC's actions go far beyond the bounds of acceptable nation-state conduct. We will resolutely defend the freedoms of all those living in our country from the threat of authoritarian repression."

The men, identified as "Harry" Lu Jianwang, 61, of the Bronx, and Chen Jinping, 59, of Manhattan, were arrested at their homes on Monday morning. It was not immediately clear if they had lawyers who could comment on their behalf.

At no point did the men register with the Justice Department as agents of a foreign government, U.S. law enforcement officials said. And though the police outpost did perform some basic services, such as helping Chinese citizens renew their Chinese driver's licenses, it also performed a more "sinister" function, including helping the Chinese government locate a pro-democracy activist of Chinese descent living in California, according to the officials.

The 34 charged are believed to live in China and remain at-large, according to the Justice Department.

"It is simply outrageous that China's Ministry of Public Security thinks it can get away with establishing a secret, illegal police station on U.S. soil to aid its efforts to export repression and subvert our rule of law," Acting Assistant Director Kurt Ronnow of the FBI Counterintelligence Division wrote in a statement.

"This case serves as a powerful reminder that the People's Republic of China will stop at nothing to bend people to their will and silence messages they don't want anyone to hear. The FBI is dedicated to protecting everyone in the United States against efforts to undermine our democratic freedoms, and we'll hold any state actors – and those who help them – accountable for breaking our laws."

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.