A Manhattan resident has pleaded guilty to helping establish a secret police station in New York City on behalf of the Chinese government.
Chen Jinping, 60, entered the guilty plea on a single count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday.
Matthew Olsen, an assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice, said Chen admitted in court to his role in “audaciously establishing an undeclared police station” in Manhattan and attempting to conceal the effort when approached by the FBI.
“This illegal police station was not opened in the interest of public safety, but to further the nefarious and repressive aims of the PRC in direct violation of American sovereignty,” he said in statement, referring to the People’s Republic of 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 starting in early 2022.
The office, which occupied 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., according to federal authorities.
The clandestine Chinese police operation was shuttered in the fall of 2022 amid an FBI investigation. But in an apparent effort to obstruct the federal probe, Chen and Lu deleted from their phones communications with a Chinese government official they reported to, prosecutors said.
China is believed to be operating such secretive police outposts in North America, Europe and other places where there are Chinese communities. The country, however, has denied that they are police stations, saying that they exist mainly to provide citizen services such as renewing driver’s licenses.
The arrest of Chen and Lu in April 2023 was part of a series of Justice Department prosecutions aimed at cracking down on “transnational repression,” in which foreign governments such as China work to identify, intimidate and silence dissidents in the U.S.
Lawyers for Chen and Lu didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment Wednesday. Chen faces up to five years in prison at his sentencing on May 30.
Lu, who is due back in court in February, had a longstanding relationship with Chinese law enforcement officials, according to prosecutors.
Over the years, they say, the Bronx resident, who was also known as Harry Lu, helped harass and threaten a Chinese fugitive living in the U.S. And also worked to locate a pro-democracy activist in California on behalf of China’s government.