HONG KONG (Reuters) – A former worker working for one in all China’s state businesses has been given a uncommon dying sentence for leaking “state secrets,” the Ministry of State Safety mentioned on Wednesday, after he was accused of handing over his USB drive to overseas spy businesses.
The case underscores China’s intense crackdown on espionage actions and highlights escalating rigidity between China and different nations on nationwide safety points.
A person surnamed Zhang supplied a “large number of top-secret and confidential state secrets to foreign spy intelligence agencies, seriously endangering China’s national security”, the ministry posted on messaging software WeChat.
It didn’t reveal his full identify or his earlier job place. Reuters was unable to contact Zhang for remark.
Zhang was as soon as “a core confidential personnel of a state agency” and was uncovered to a lot of state secrets and techniques at work, the ministry mentioned.
After leaving his job, Zhang grew to become an “important target for foreign spy intelligence agencies to win over and subvert”.
“Zhang, who was weak in character and could not resist the temptation of money, became a ‘puppet’ controlled and used by the other party,” the ministry mentioned.
Zhang travelled outdoors of China to fulfill with a overseas spy surnamed Li who pressured him to signal a cooperation settlement. Li seized Zhang’s USB work flash drive and private belongings, the ministry mentioned.
After receiving coaching from the overseas spy company, Zhang grew to become “a secret-stealing black hand controlled and used by the foreign intelligence agency”.
Chinese language lawmakers handed a wide-ranging replace to Beijing’s anti-espionage laws in April, banning the switch of any info associated to nationwide safety and broadening the definition of spying.
In a separate case earlier this 12 months, a Beijing courtroom handed Australian author Yang Hengjun a suspended dying sentence on espionage fees in February, a call the Australian authorities described as “harrowing”.
A suspended dying sentence in China offers the accused a two-year reprieve from being executed, after which it’s routinely transformed to life imprisonment, or extra hardly ever, fixed-term imprisonment. The person stays in jail all through.
In Zhang’s case there was no point out of a suspended dying sentence.
