Hongkonger Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former CIA agent, is charged with spying for China

Former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a Hong Kong resident, has been charged with gathering classified information he allegedly intended to pass to the Chinese government, the US Justice Department said on Tuesday.

Lee, 53, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Virginia on one count of conspiracy to gather or deliver national defence information to aid a foreign government and two counts of unlawfully retaining documents related to the national defence.

Lee, who worked for the CIA from 1994 to 2007, was arrested in January at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, after he had flown there from Hong Kong.

In 2010, Lee was approached by two Chinese intelligence officers who offered to pay him for information, the Justice Department said.

FBI agents searched Lee’s hotel rooms in 2012 during trips to Virginia and Hawaii and discovered he had information that included the true names and numbers of spy recruits and covert CIA employees, the department said.