The US Department of Justice has announced the arrest of two Chinese suspects accused of setting up and operating an “undeclared police station” for the Chinese (People’s Republic of China) government in lower Manhattan.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for national security David Newman, US Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York, Assistant Director in Charge Michael J. Driscoll of the FBI’s New York Field Office and Assistant Director in Charge David Sundberg of the FBI’s Washington Field Office held a joint news conference to announce the arrests.
The two suspects were charged in Brooklyn with conspiring to act as agents for the government of the People’s Republic of China and destroying evidence, as well as operating an undeclared Chinese police station in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood.
China claimed the undeclared police station – one of many planted by the PRC around the world — was actually a “service center” run by volunteers to help Chinese nationals with paperwork issues.
The US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), both of which were involved in the investigation and arrest, alleged that operatives at the undeclared Chinese police station were harassing a man to return to China, while harassing his family in China at the same time.
The “brazen, criminal schemes” were allegedly directed and carried out by China’s National Police Service to “export and crush any criticism … here in the United States,” the FBI said.
“We are focused on the Chinese government – not the Chinese people and not Americans of Chinese descent,” the FBI emphasized.
