A Chinese agent tried in the United States

The U.S. Department of Justice said Friday that China’s intelligence agency was convicted Friday of spying for economic spying at a federal court in the United States for attempting to steal technology from US and French space agencies.

Xu Yanjun, an official in the Jiangsu province of the Foreign Intelligence Bureau under the State Department of Defense, established his guilt on the basis of complicity by a court in Cincinnati and attempted economic espionage, as well as three accounts that stole trade secrets. .

Imprisonment for up to 45 years

Each of the two charges related to economic espionage carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, while the other three charges carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison each.

U.S. officials have accused China of trying to obtain information about several airlines, including Xu Yanjun, American General Electric Aviation and French Saffron, since 2013.

This agent of the Chinese Ministry of Defense would have identified the experts hired by these companies, paid them a trip under the guise of university conferences, and lured them to China.

Arrested in Belgium in 2018, he may have been attracted there as part of a counter-intelligence operation, thinking of meeting a GE employee. That same year he was deported to the United States.

The U.S. Justice Department named 10 more defendants at the time, including two junior agents, six hackers who worked with them, and two men who worked for Safran. None of the other 10 offenders were arrested.

The ministry also said that the Beijing-controlled space agency was trying to develop a machine similar to GE’s for use in aircraft designed by China.