An officer with the New York City Police Department was arrested Monday on federal charges of acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government by spying on Tibetan immigrants in the United States, according to reports.
Baimadajie Angwang, 33, an ethnic Tibetan native of China and naturalized U.S. citizen, works as a community affairs officer in the 111th Precinct in Queens and is also a U.S. Army Reservist at Fort Dix, according to WABC News 7 in New York.
A federal criminal complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court alleges Angwang worked “at the direction and control” of Chinese officials in the New York consulate and used his official position at the police department to grant his Chinese handlers access to senior NYPD officials, reports said. Angwang is also accused of regularly reporting on the activities of ethnic Tibetans in the city, and assessing their potential as intelligence sources.
Angwang’s job was to “locate potential intelligence sources” and “identify potential threats to the People’s Republic of China in the New York metropolitan area,” court papers state.
However, “none of these activities falls within the scope of Angwang’s official duties and responsibilities with either the NYPD or the USAR,” the complaint stated.
The FBI alleges that Angwang had engaged in the arrangement since June 2018 and was “in frequent communication” with an anonymous Chinese consular official that he called “Boss.”
In one conversation, Angwang offered to accompany the official at NYPD events “to raise our country’s soft power,” the complaint alleges, adding that he also said he would provide top secret information about the department’s internal affairs.
“Angwang also discussed the utility of developing sources for the PRC government in the local Tibetan community and suggested that the primary qualification for a source as follows: ‘If you’re willing to recognize the motherland, the motherland is willing to assist you with its resources,’” the complaint said.
Before becoming a citizen, Angwang had “sought asylum in the United States on the basis that he had allegedly been arrested and tortured in the PRC due partly to this Tibetan ethnicity,” court papers said.
He was to appear in court later Monday.
Relations have been strained between Washington and Beijing in recent months as the world’s two biggest economies spar over alleged technology theft, national security, human rights and trade.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently announced new restrictions on Chinese diplomats who work inside the U.S. and accused Beijing of “a system of opaque approval processes designed to prevent American diplomats from conducting regular business, attending events, securing meetings and connecting with the Chinese people.”
The new policy revokes “open access to American society,” requiring Chinese diplomats to receive prior approval from the State Department to visit college campuses or meet with government officials, Pompeo said. It also restricts the ability of Chinese diplomats to host cultural events in the United States.
In June, the U.S. ordered China to close its consulate in Houston, which drew a reciprocal response from Beijing that forced the closure of the U.S. consulate in Chengdu. Last month, the administration demanded that Chinese-funded language and culture programs in the U.S. register as foreign missions of the Chinese Communist Party.
The U.S. alleged that the Houston consulate was a nest of Chinese spies who tried to steal data from facilities in Texas, including the Texas A&M medical system and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. China said the allegations were “malicious slander.”
China maintains consulates in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York in addition to an embassy in Washington.
The U.S. has four other consulates in China and an embassy in Beijing, keeping the sides in parity in terms of diplomatic missions.
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