Feds drop case against NYPD officer accused of spying for China

The federal authorities have dropped a case against an NYPD officer accused of spying for the Chinese government.

The prosecutor for the Eastern District of New York filed a motion to dismiss the case against Baimadaji Angwang on Friday, more than two years after the 33-year-old was arrested on suspicion of spying on other Tibetan immigrants in New York.

“As a result of our ongoing investigation, the government has received additional information on the allegations,” the motion to dismiss reads. The office asked for the charges to be dropped after “evaluating the evidence as a whole in light of this information” but did not elaborate.

The complaint says Angwang, who is a naturalized US citizen and worked as a patrol officer at the 111th Precinct in Queens, was also accused of lying about his foreign contacts. He was allegedly involved in espionage activities from May 2018 until his arrest in September 2020.

Angwan faces charges including acting as an agent of a foreign government without prior notice to the Attorney General, wire fraud, making false statements about his contacts, and obstructing official proceedings.

Around May 2019, Angwang allegedly participated in a scheme to defraud the US Department of Defense and “obtain money and property from the US government through one or more false and fraudulent pretenses.”
statements and promises,” the federal complaint says.

To achieve this goal, Angwan allegedly handed over a fake National Security Application Form, which is the standard form required for jobs that require a certain security clearance. In this questionnaire, he allegedly lied about having “extensive contacts with government officials from the People’s Republic of China” and lied about having regular contacts with family in China, some of which were connected to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which is a branch of the armed forces of the Chinese government.

The obstruction charges stem from allegedly falsified documents he submitted to his own national security inquiry.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said on Monday that a 33-year-old NYPD officer and ethnic Tibetan native of China was arrested on suspicion of acting as an agent of a foreign government and lying to gain asylum in the United States. This is reported by NBC New York correspondent Checky Beckford.

“This is the definition of a domestic threat – Mr. Angwan is said to have acted on behalf of a foreign government; lied to gain security clearance and used his position as an NYPD officer to aid the Chinese government in subversive and illegal attempts to recruit intelligence. sources,” FBI Deputy Chief Executive William Sweeney said.

Angwang, who currently lives in Nassau County’s Williston Park, came to the United States for the first time on a cultural exchange visa. The complaint states that he overstayed his second visa and eventually applied for asylum in the US on the grounds that he was tortured in China in part because of his Tibetan heritage. It is believed that thousands of Tibetans have been killed by the People’s Republic of China since China occupied and took control of the region in 1951.

Officials believed the asylum request was also based on lies, given that Angwang returned to China several times after his application was granted and has close ties to family members who still live in the People’s Republic of China.

In addition to patrolling the 111th Precinct, Angwang worked for his Crime Prevention Team and was assigned to the Public Affairs Division, where he served as a liaison between the NYPD and the community. He has received at least one award from the Police Benevolent Association. NYPD officials said he was a member of the department for about five years, with three of them following him.

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said at the time that Angwang had “broken every oath he had taken in this country. One oath to the United States, another to the US Army, and a third to this police department.”

Angwang served in the US Marine Corps until 2014 and spent time in Afghanistan. After serving in the Marine Corps, he joined the Army Reserve where he holds the rank of master sergeant and is stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in the Civil Affairs Airborne Battalion. In this role, Angwang is a civil affairs specialist who advises the command on the tactical and operational deployment of civil affairs teams and assists in planning, training, advising and executing civil-military programs, the complaint says. In connection with this job, he has a “secret” clearance level; the complaint stated that he would not have received this level of clearance if the Department of Defense had known of his foreign connections.

In addition, he would have been completely discharged from the US Army Reserve if the organization had known about his alleged relationship with two employees of the Chinese consulate in the New York area, dating back to at least 2018.

“The accused allegedly violated his oath to serve the New York community and defend the Constitution from all enemies by informing PRC government officials about the activities of Chinese citizens in the New York area and by developing intelligence sources within the Tibetan community in the United States. United States,” Acting U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme said in 2020.

Recorded conversations revealed that one of these contacts, believed to be his “curator”, worked for the China Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Tibetan Culture, which is tasked with “neutralizing sources of potential opposition to the policies and authorities of the People’s Republic of China.” China,” the complaint says.

Among these sources will be members of the Tibetan Independence Movement, a group that emerged immediately after China came to power in 1951 and seeks to restore its independence and political division.

Investigators believe that Angwang received assignments from this contact at the consulate and reported to him. Between June 18 and March 2020, he allegedly called or texted the contact’s phone at least 55 times. He also called or wrote to the second consular officer at least 53 times between August 2014 and 2017.

Federal officials accused Angwan of providing information about ethnic Tibetans in New York and elsewhere to the Chinese government, tracking down Tibetan intelligence agents, and using his official position with the NYPD to gain Chinese consular access to high-ranking NYPD members through official event invitations.

None of these activities are part of his responsibilities with the NYPD or the US Army Reserve, the criminal complaint says.

At some point, Angwan allegedly told his supposed “curator” about a new Tibetan community center in Queens. He said that they should visit him together. When the official refused, Angwang said, according to court documents, “Whether it’s good or not, you need to know about it for the sake of your job. Now they are the biggest place for activities. more than half of the meetings may take place there in the future.”

In another conversation, the official congratulated Angwan on his upcoming NYPD promotion exam, to which Angwan allegedly said he was doing it “for people left at home”. The officer said his police work was valuable to China because he could provide information about the NYPD to the consulate, court documents say. This included non-public information about internal NYPD operations. Angwan also allegedly spoke of recruiting local Tibetans as Chinese agents; there was talk of rewarding potential recruits with 10-year US visas.

Angwan also allegedly told his alleged “handler” that U.S. citizens of Tibetan ethnicity work in the New York offices of elected officials and that some employees could potentially use their access to promote positions unfavorable to the Chinese government in their constituencies.

Angwan’s ties to the People’s Republic of China go beyond his alleged conversations with consular officials: his father is a retired member of the People’s Liberation Army of China and a member of the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China. His brother is a PLA reservist and his mother is a retired government official and member of the Chinese Communist Party, according to the federal complaint.

All three of these relatives live in the People’s Republic of China. Angwan allegedly transferred $100,000 from his US bank account to his brother in China and $50,000 from another US bank account in his name to an unidentified person who also has a bank account in the People’s Republic of China. The People’s Republic of China also sent him tens of thousands of telegrams, the feds said.

In response to the arrest, the International Campaign for Tibet said in a statement that the alleged actions would show “that the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in malicious operations to suppress dissent, not only in Tibet, where Tibetans are oppressed and deprived of all freedoms, but any place in the world where Tibetans are free to express their opinion.” The statement went on to say that “by severely limiting access to Tibet for the Tibetan-American community, the Chinese government is trying to create an atmosphere of suspicion among the members of the community and is trying to use it to their advantage.”

The leader of the New York group Students for a Free Tibet said that Angwang tried to infiltrate the group and “get more information about the community” before they suspected his motives given that he had never been an active member of the community. before.

Angwang faces up to 55 years in prison if found guilty.