Two spies tried to sabotage prosecution of Chinese telecom giant: feds

Two Chinese intelligence officers are accused of trying to sabotage the prosecution of telecommunications giant Huawei by paying for what they thought was a strategy memo from the U.S. government’s lawyers.

Guochun He, 45, and Zheng Weng, 37, believed they had cultivated a mole inside a federal law enforcement agency to do cloak-and-dagger spying work for them, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in Brooklyn.

But that insider turned out to be a double-agent working at the direction of the FBI, federal prosecutors said.

Both men are believed to be in the People’s Republic of China.

“The case involves an effort by [Chinese] intelligence officers to obstruct an ongoing criminal prosecution by making bribes to obtain files from this office and sharing them with a global telecommunications company that is a charged defendant in an ongoing prosecution,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace. “We will always act decisively to counteract criminal acts that target our system of justice.”

The duo allegedly built up a relationship with their supposed informant in 2017 and started pressing for info in January 2019 — after charges were unsealed against a major Chinese tech company.

A source familiar with the case confirmed that the complaint referred to the federal prosecution of Huawei for financial fraud, theft of trade secrets and sanctions violations.

Wang insisted on setting up a public pay phone conversation with their contact, prosecutors said. When that finally, happened, he started asking for an inside track on the prosecution, the feds allege.

For the next two years, the duo asked for witness lists, information about cooperating witnesses and information about forthcoming charges, prosecutors allege.

“I think I might be able to volunteer to help a colleague with something related to [the company]. No promises, but I’m going to try to get involved,” the supposed mole wrote in a September 2021 e-mail correspondence.

The contact claimed to be attending prosecution team meetings “at the Eastern District of New York” and offered to snoop, ask questions and try to access sensitive files.

On Oct. 29, 2021, the supposed mole hit paydirt, telling He, “I managed to get a page from the legal strategy memo.”

That page, marked “SECRET” and “CONFIDENTIAL ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT,” was just what He and Wang wanted, the feds alleged. They wound up paying $41,000 in Bitcoin to get a copy, according to the prosecutors.

The supposed mole claimed to have another page from the same document a month later, written in code.

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The document included “purported cooperating witnesses” identified with colorful pseudonyms like “Marilyn Monroe” and “Carey Grant,” the criminal complaint said.

The alleged spies wanted…