Chinese agent convicted of economic espionage
A Chinese intelligence agent has been convicted of attempting to steal technologies from US and French aerospace companies.
Xu Yanjun sought, from 2013, to obtain information on behalf of China on several aviation companies, including the American General Electric Aviation.
AFP
A Chinese intelligence agent was convicted on Friday of economic espionage in federal court in the United States for attempting to steal technologies from American and French aerospace companies, the United States Department of Justice said.
Xu Yanjun, an official in Jiangsu Province of the Foreign Intelligence Bureau, under the Department of State Security, had his guilt established by a Cincinnati court on charges of complicity and attempted espionage economic, as well as three counts of theft of trade secrets.
Each of the two counts of economic espionage can carry a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, while each of the other three counts is punishable by 10 years in prison. The American authorities accuse Xu Yanjun of having, from 2013, sought to obtain information on behalf of China on several aeronautical companies, including the American General Electric Aviation and the French Safran, which collaborated with GE on the development. of an engine.
Counterintelligence operation
This agent of the Chinese State Security Ministry would have identified experts employed by these companies and would have attracted them to China under the pretext of university conferences, by paying them the trip. Arrested in 2018 in Belgium, he had probably been lured there as part of a counter-espionage operation, thinking of meeting an employee of GE.
He was extradited the same year to the United States. The US Department of Justice at the time also named 10 other defendants, including two junior agents of Xu, as well as six hackers working with them and two men working for Safran. None of the other 10 accused were arrested.
The indictments of the Department of Justice detailed operations combining the use of computer viruses and phishing to infiltrate target computers and extract data relating to engines and their parts.
The ministry also said that a Beijing-controlled aerospace company was trying to develop an engine similar to GE’s, for use in an aircraft designed by China. The charges were dismissed by Beijing. “Wind”, summed up in 2018 a spokesperson for Chinese diplomacy.
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