US charges Hong Kong-born former CIA officer with selling secrets to China
- Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 67, could face life in prison for allegedly conspiring to communicate national defence information to aid a foreign government
- FBI document says Ma’s spying started in 2001, when he and his Los Angeles-based relative met Chinese operatives in Hong Kong hotel room
A former CIA officer has been arrested and charged with conspiracy to provide classified information to the Chinese government, US Justice Department officials announced on Monday.
Beginning in 2001 and lasting for more than a decade, Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 67, is alleged to have worked with a relative, also a former intelligence officer, to provide top secret intelligence to handlers with China’s Ministry of State Secretary (MSS).
Ma, a Hong Kong-born naturalised US citizen, is alleged to have told an undercover FBI officer shortly before his arrest that he wanted the “motherland” to succeed, according to an FBI affidavit unsealed on Monday.
The Justice Department did not name the 85-year-old relative but said it was not pursuing the person because of it called his “advanced and debilitating cognitive disease”.
Ma is alleged to have begun providing information regarding the CIA’s operations in March 2001, after a meeting in Hong Kong with Chinese handlers who furnished him and his relative with US$50,000 in cash.