The FBI and federal prosecutors announced Monday the arrests of two New York residents who allegedly ran an undisclosed Chinese government police station in Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood.
Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping have each been charged with conspiring to act as agents of China's government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for that office, said China's Ministry of Public Security (MPS) “has repeatedly and flagrantly violated our nation's sovereignty, including by opening and operating a police station in the middle of New York City.”
“Two miles from our office, just across the Brooklyn Bridge, this nondescript office building in the heart of bustling Chinatown in Lower Manhattan has a dark secret. Until several months ago, an entire floor of this building hosted an undeclared police station of the Chinese National Police,” Peace said. “Now, just imagine the NYPD opening an undeclared secret police station in Beijing. It would be unthinkable.”