United States: Chinese Agents Paid Bribes in Plot to Disrupt Anti-Communist Falun Gong Movement

NEW YORK (AP) US authorities have arrested two suspected Chinese government agents in connection with an alleged plot by Beijing to disrupt and ultimately overthrow the exiled anti-Communist spiritual movement Falun Gong.

John Chen and Lin Feng were charged in an unsealed indictment on Friday with conspiring to revoke the tax-exempt status of a New York-based Falun Gong organization and paying bribes. wine to an undercover agent posing as a US tax official.

The undercover agent recorded several conversations with Chen, and investigators obtained a wiretap to record phone calls in which Chen and Feng discussed instructions they allegedly received from Chinese government officials, the authorities said. prosecutors.

In one recording, prosecutors said, Chen referred to Chinese government officials as blood brothers, and in another he said Beijing would be very generous in rewarding undercover agents who help suppress the status of Falun Gong non-profit organization.

Chen, a 70-year-old US citizen, and Feng, a 43-year-old lawful permanent resident, are charged with acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government, bribing a public official and conspiracy to commit international money laundering.

Both Chen and Feng were born in China but now live in the Los Angeles area, where they were arrested on Friday. Information about a first court appearance or lawyers who might speak on their behalf was not immediately available.

Messages seeking comment have been left with the Chinese Embassy in Washington and the Falun Gong movement.

China banned the Falun Gong movement in 1999, listing it as an evil cult and one of the five poisons, or major threats to its rule. Since then, Falun Gong practitioners have taken refuge in a 400-acre resort called Dragon Springs in New York State.

In the United States, the Falun Gong movement is best known for its ties to Shen Yun, a touring performing arts group, and The Epoch Times, a newspaper that has been marketed as an alternative to mainstream American media while being also criticized for amplifying misinformation. and conspiracy theories.

The Justice Department has launched a series of lawsuits in recent years to disrupt China’s efforts in the United States to identify, locate and silence pro-democracy activists and others who openly criticize Beijing’s policies. Such practices by foreign governments are known as transnational repression.

The Chinese government has once again tried, and failed, to target critics of the (People’s Republic of China) here in the United States, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

The United States, Garland added, will continue to investigate, disrupt and prosecute China’s efforts to silence its critics and expand its regime’s reach on American soil.

Seeking to undermine Falun Gong, according to federal prosecutors, Chen and Fengs urged the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the organization’s nonprofit tax status. In a whistleblower complaint to the tax agency in February, Chen described Falun Gong as a gigantic mega-cult echoing language used by the Chinese government to describe the movement.

Chen and Feng then turned to the undercover agent to make sure the IRS followed up on the complaint, offering a $50,000 reward and handing over $5,000 in cash as a deposit if the agency tax was conducting an audit, prosecutors said.

Chen met the officer at a restaurant in upstate New York on May 14, prosecutors said. A few days later, the officer sent Chen a letter on a fake IRS letterhead stating that the agency had opened a file on Falun Gong, prosecutors said. Chen passed the news to Feng in a tapped phone conversation, saying he planned to update Chinese government officials on their progress, prosecutors said.

Chen and Feng’s arrest comes a month after the Justice Department accused two men of establishing a secret police station in New York on behalf of the Chinese government. Around the same time, federal prosecutors charged about three dozen Chinese National Police officers with using social media to harass dissidents inside the United States.

In 2020, the Justice Department accused more than half a dozen people of working on behalf of the Chinese government in a pressure campaign to coerce a New Jersey man wanted by Beijing to return to China to do facing charges.

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Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

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