Global Courant
Three men were convicted on several charges on Tuesday in a trial demonstrating US allegations that China mounted pressure campaigns on US soil to bully expatriates into returning home, part of an effort dubbed “Operation Fox Hunt”.
US private investigator Michael McMahon and two Chinese citizens living in the US – Zheng Congying and Zhu Yong – were all charged with participating in scare tactics targeting a former Chinese official. He lived quietly in New Jersey and Beijing wanted him back.
Zhu was convicted of acting as an illegal foreign agent, stalking, interstate conspiracy, and conspiracy to act as an illegal foreign agent. Zheng was convicted of stalking and conspiracy, but was acquitted of the other charges.
McMahon was convicted of all but conspiracy to act as a foreign agent.
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The trial in federal court in Brooklyn was the first to result from a spate of US prosecutions scrutinizing China’s Operation Fox Hunt, a nearly decade-old initiative that Beijing characterizes as a pursuit of fugitives from justice. The US authorities see it, at least sometimes, as an exercise in “transnational repression”, or the use of government agents to harass, threaten and silence critics living abroad.
China has denied trying to force repatriations through intimidation and says the US is slandering an effort to fight crime.
Prosecutors say pressure was exerted from Beijing on a New Jersey suburb, where former city official Xu Jin and his family moved to in 2010. China has accused him and his wife Liu Fang of taking bribes; they deny it, saying they were targeted because he came into contact with China’s communist power structure.
According to prosecutors, Zhu, Zheng and McMahon participated in a multi-year attempt to get Xu to return to China. The country could not officially force him to do so, as it does not have an extradition treaty with the US
Zhu Yong, right, tries to shield himself from photographers as he leaves federal court in New York’s Brooklyn borough on May 31. Zhu was one of three encounters accused of taking part in an escalating series of terrifying tactics aimed at repatriating a former Chinese official living quietly in New Jersey. (Maria Altaffer)
The defense acknowledged that Zhu, Zheng and McMahon had taken different actions, but said the three had no idea Beijing was allegedly behind it.
McMahon said he was “devastated by the verdict”, insisting he had only done his job as a private investigator.
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“If I had known for even one second that they were a foreign country, a foreign government employing me, I never would have worked the case. I would have notified the FBI,” McMahon said. His attorney, Lawrence Lustberg, said he would challenge the conviction and was confident that “this injustice will not survive the judicial system’s scrutiny.”
Zheng and Zhu left the court without talking to reporters. Messages requesting comment were sent to their lawyers.
McMahon, a former New York City police sergeant, conducted surveillance and data searches to fumigate Xu’s carefully guarded address and information about his loved ones. Zhu, a retiree also mentioned by Jason Zhu and Yong Zhu, helped hire McMahon and give him the details to get started.
Zheng later went to Xu’s house and left an ominous note: “If you are willing to go back to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be fine. That’s the end of this case!”
“Before seeing this, I felt that the threats from the Chinese Communist Party were just a mental threat to me. However, when I saw that note, I realized it had become a physical threat,” Xu testified through a court interpreter. .
Michael McMahon, right, gives a thumbs up as he leaves federal court on May 31, 2023. McMahon was one of three men charged with participating in an escalating series of scare tactics aimed at repatriating a former Chinese official who was living quietly in New York City. Jersey. (Maria Altaffer)
The defense said McMahon, Zheng and Zhu were told they were helping collect a debt or accomplishing some other purpose for a company or individuals — not China.
“They were used, duped, tricked by a foreign government into working for them,” Zhu’s lawyer Kevin Tung said in a closing argument.
But assistant attorney Craig Heeren said the three “agreed to participate in something that went way, way over the line…a line that all three defendants knew they were crossing.”
The trial came at a fraught time in US-China relations. The two powers have been at odds over a growing list of issues in recent years: trade, industrial espionage, human rights, Taiwan, the South China Sea, Russia’s war against Ukraine, US allegations of Chinese espionage, and the claims of Washington that Beijing follows them. and harassing dissidents abroad.
The two nations said they made some progress in improving relations in recent days, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and top diplomats. But it remains unclear whether the countries will be able to bridge their biggest differences, and Blinken said he left empty-handed on a key request: better military-to-military communications.
China announced Operation Fox Hunt in July 2014 as an attempt to go after corrupt officials and criminals who had fled the country. However, Beijing’s wanted list includes people whose political and cultural views conflict with those of China’s ruling Communist Party.
Zheng Congying, one of three accused of participating in an escalating series of terrifying tactics aimed at repatriating a former Chinese official, leaves a courthouse on May 31. (Maria Altaffer)
U.S. prosecutors have filed several criminal cases related to alleged Operation Fox Hunt efforts. In one case, a pregnant US citizen was detained in China for eight months and pressured to persuade her mother to return to the country, prosecutors said.
Zheng, McMahon and Zhu were charged along with eight other people who were also accused of harassing Xu, the former Wuhan official. Three have pleaded guilty; five are believed to be in China.
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Prosecutors said the arm twisting was included derogatory Facebook messages to friends from Xu’s adult daughter and a deluge of letters to a relative in New Jersey.
At one point, a Chinese prosecutor even flew Xu’s reluctant octogenarian father to New Jersey to lean on his son to return to their homeland, according to prosecutors and testimony at trial.
