International
Man admits running secret Chinese ‘police station’ in NYC
An American citizen has pleaded guilty to helping run what has been described as the first known secret police station in the US on behalf of the Chinese government.
Prosecutors say Chen Jinping and his co-defendent Lu Jianwang opened and operated the station in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighbourhood in early 2022 on behalf of China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS).
At least 100 such stations have been reported worldwide across 53 countries, with rights groups accusing China of using the outposts to threaten and monitor Chinese nationals abroad.
But China has denied that they are police stations, saying they are “service stations” providing administrative services to nationals overseas.
The outpost, which occupied an entire floor above a ramen stall, did provide basic services like renewing Chinese citizens’ driver licenses, but it also helped Beijing identify pro-democracy activists living in the US, say federal authorities.
Matthew Olsen, an assistant attorney general in the US Department of Justice, called the attempt to operate the undeclared overseas police station “a clear affront to American sovereignty and danger to our community that will not be tolerated”.
The station was closed in the autumn of 2022 after the Federal Investigation Bureau launched an investigation.
But Chen and Lu destroyed text messages they exchanged with an MPS official when they learned of the probe, prosecutors said.
The men, who are both American citizens, were arrested in April last year.
On Wednesday, Chen, 60, pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an agent for China, and faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced next year.
Chen’s acknowledgement of guilt is a “stark reminder of insidious efforts taken by the [Chinese] government to threaten, harass, and intimidate those who speak against their Communist Party,” Robert Wells, an executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch said in a statement.
Lu, 59, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. Prosecutors have accused him of harassing a purported Chinese fugitive to return to China and for helping to locate a pro-democracy activist in California on behalf of the Communist Party.
At the time of Chen’s arrest, authorities said it marked the first time the US has brought criminal charges in relation to such police outposts.
Mr Olsen said US authorities would “continue to pursue anyone who attempts to aid the PRC’s efforts to extend their repressive reach into the United States”.
In September, Linda Sun, a former aide in the New York governor’s office, was charged with using her position to serve Chinese government interests. She was said to have received benefits, including travel, in return.
Last year, 34 officers from the MPS were also charged with using fake social media accounts to harass Chinese dissidents in the US and spread official Chinese government propaganda.
International
FTX executives shave serious time off their sentences
Ryan Salame and Caroline Ellison, FTX executives convicted for their roles in the notorious crypto fraud led by their former boss Sam Bankman-Fried, have both shaved time off their lengthy prison sentences.
Salame, a former top executive of FTX, the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency trading platform, pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges in September 2023, and was sentenced in May to 7 1/2 years in federal prison. He began his sentence in October. But the Federal Bureau of Prisons currently lists his release date as March 1, 2031, more than a year earlier than his initial release date in April 2032. Business Insider first reported Salame’s new release date.
Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend and the former CEO of FTX’s hedge fund arm, Alameda Research, was sentenced to 2 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to seven federal counts of fraud and conspiracy and was a key witness against Bankman-Fried. Her current release date is listed as July 20, 2025, three months earlier than her initial release date.
Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison, does not have a release date listed on the prisons website.
The Bureau of Prisons didn’t immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment. However, in several past statements about early release dates, the bureau has told CNN that it does not comment on the conditions of any individual inmate, but inmates can earn good conduct time that is calculated into their projected release date.
Qualified inmates are currently eligible for up to 54 days of GCT time for each year of the sentence imposed by the court. Inmates have other ways of earning time credits while incarcerated, including participation in various prison programs.
FTX was a high-profile crypto startup that allowed people to buy and sell digital assets. It had its name emblazoned on an arena in Miami and on every Major League Baseball umpire’s jersey. The exchange had several celebrity endorsers and was widely believed to be a gold-standard for safety and security.
But FTX collapsed in November 2022 when customers pulled their funds as rumors spread about FTX’s unusually close ties to its founder’s crypto hedge fund, Alameda
International
Accusations of genocide. Charges of corruption. Improbably, Netanyahu had a good year
This time last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the doldrums.
“He started very low,” said Nadav Shtrauchler, a political strategist who has worked closely with Netanyahu. “The lowest point that he had.”
Many Israelis accused him of being asleep at the wheel on October 7, the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Some even said he enabled it by funding Hamas.
His political support was dismal – even if the Gaza war let him brush aside calls for an election. Polls suggested support for his Likud Party was down 25% from just three months prior.
On its face, the year that followed was hardly uplifting. It brought tens of thousands of deaths, regional conflict, indictments, and accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide. And yet, Netanyahu ends the year having transformed his standing in Israel.
“I am running a marathon,” he told a Tel Aviv courtroom earlier this month, facing charges – which he denies – of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. “I can run it with 20 kilos on my back, and I can run it with 10 kilos on my back.”
International
‘It’s a scary time’: US universities urge international students to return to campus before Trump inauguration
Fear and uncertainty are spreading across many US college campuses ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration, with some schools advising international students to return early from winter break amid promises of another travel ban like the one that stranded students abroad at the start of Trump’s last term.
In a country where more than 1.1 million international students enrolled in US colleges and universities during the 2023-24 academic year, the former president has pledged more hardline immigration policies upon his return to the White House, including an expansion of his previous travel ban on people from predominantly Muslim countries and the revocation of student visas of “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners.”
International students generally have nonimmigrant visas that allow them to study in the US but don’t provide a legal pathway to stay in the country.
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