Two men were arrested early Monday on federal charges accusing them of conspiring to act as agents of the People’s Republic of China in connection with a police outpost it operated in Manhattan’s Chinatown, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The outpost was one of more than 100 Chinese police operations around the world that have unnerved diplomats and intelligence officials. The case represents the first time criminal charges have been brought in connection with such a police outpost, one of the people said.
The case against the men, Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, grew out of an investigation by the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn into the Chinatown outpost, which conducted police operations without jurisdiction or diplomatic approval.
Last fall, F.B.I. counterintelligence agents searched the outpost’s offices, located on the third floor of a nondescript building at 107 East Broadway, indicating an escalation in the global dispute over China’s efforts to police its diaspora far beyond its borders.
Officials in Ireland, Canada and the Netherlands have called on China to shut down similar operations in their countries. The F.B.I. raid in New York was the first known example of authorities seizing materials from one of the outposts.
It could not be immediately determined whether the men had lawyers. Mr. Lu, who is also known as Harry Lu, lives in the Bronx and is a naturalized American citizen. Mr. Chen lives in Manhattan; his citizenship could not be immediately confirmed.
In 2018 IRS filings, Mr. Lu was listed as the president of a nonprofit organization called the America Changle Association NY, whose offices housed the police outpost. The nature of Mr. Chen’s connection to the group could not be immediately determined.
A spokeswoman at the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment and an F.B.I. spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two men were charged with obstruction of justice and accused of destroying evidence as well as conspiring to act as agents of the People’s Republic of China, according to the people with knowledge of the matter.
The charges were expected to be announced later Monday at a news conference in Brooklyn by the U.S. attorney, Breon S. Peace; the F.B.I. assistant director who leads the New York office, Michael Driscoll; and the Justice Department’s top national security official in Washington, David Newman.
When news of the search was first reported in January, the Chinese Embassy in Washington downplayed the role of the outposts, saying they were staffed by volunteers who helped Chinese nationals perform routine tasks like renewing their driver’s licenses back home.
But The New York Times reviewed Chinese state news media reports in which the police and local Chinese officials described the operations very differently.
The officials, cited by name, trumpeted the effectiveness of the offices, frequently referred to as overseas police service centers. In some of the reports, the outposts were described as “collecting intelligence” and solving crimes abroad without the involvement of local officials.
Those public statements left it murky who exactly was running the offices. In some instances, they were described as being led by volunteers; in others, by staff members.