Skip to footer

FBI employee pleads guilty to acting as agent of China

Kun Shan Chun admitted that he on several occasions passed sensitive information to a Chinese official.

  • By Nate Raymond Reuters

| New York

A FBI electronics technician pleaded guilty on Monday to having illegally acted as an agent of China, admitting that he on several occasions passed sensitive information to a Chinese official.

Kun Shan Chun, also known as Joey Chun, was employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation since 1997. He pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to one count of having illegally acted as an agent of a foreign government.

Chun, who was arrested in March on a set of charges made public only on Monday, admitted in court that from 2011 to 2016 he acted at the direction of a Chinese official, to whom he passed the sensitive information.

That information included the identity and travel plans of an FBI agent; an internal organizational chart; and photos he took of documents in a restricted area related to surveillance technology, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Emil Bove.

"At the time, I knew that was wrong, and I'm sorry for my actions," said Chun, who was born in China and is a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Chun, 46, was released on bail following the court hearing. Under a plea agreement, he has waived his right to appeal any sentence of 27 months or less. He is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 2.

"The truth is that Mr. Chun loves the United States and never intended to cause it any harm," Jonathan Marvinny, his lawyer, said in a statement. "He hopes to put this matter behind him and move forward with his life."

Chun was initially charged in March for having made false statements in order to conceal his contact with several Chinese nationals and a Chinese-based computer printer manufacturer called Zhuhai Kolion Technology Company Ltd.

The complaint said Chun was asked by individuals affiliated with the company to perform research and consulting tasks in exchange for, among other things, foreign travel.

Kolion had "government backing," and he was asked by associates in China who "deal with" the government to consult for it, Chun was recorded telling an undercoverFBI agent in 2015, the complaint said.

According to the complaint, Chun told the agent that his Chinese associates sometimes paid for prostitutes for him and provided hotels when he traveled to China.

He said his parents urged him to work with those individuals because they were investors in Kolion, the complaint said.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to FBI employee pleads guilty to acting as agent of China
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2016/0802/FBI-employee-pleads-guilty-to-acting-as-agent-of-China
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe