Australian man who worked in China found guilty of foreign interference
The Straits Times
The marketing executive was the first person charged with the crime of reckless foreign interference. Read more at straitstimes.com.
SYDNEY – An Australian man who worked in China was found guilty of reckless foreign interference by a Sydney court on March 13, the first conviction for the offence.
Marketing executive Alexander Csergo, 59, was arrested by the Australian police in Sydney in 2023, shortly after he returned from living in Shanghai.
Csergo was accused of accepting cash from Chinese intelligence agents to write reports on topics such as Australia’s AUKUS nuclear submarine partnership with the US and Britain, as well as critical minerals.
The court heard he had met in Shanghai with two suspected Chinese agents known to him as Ken and Evelyn after they made contact on the professional networking platform LinkedIn.
Csergo met the pair in empty cafes in Shanghai, where he suspected the venues had been cleared for their meetings.
He returned to Australia in 2023 with a “shopping list” of topics Ken wanted information collected on.
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