China arrests MI6 agent from England. Photo/Reuters
BEIJING – China arrested a secret agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) who was collecting sensitive data.
China’s Ministry of National Security, which oversees intelligence and counterintelligence, said Britain’s spy agency used personnel from third countries to carry out espionage against China.
The Ministry of National Security identified the alleged perpetrator as Huang Moumou, who it said heads an overseas consultancy agency, but did not provide further personal details. “MI6 recruited Huang in 2015 and established a cooperative intelligence relationship with him,” claimed the Ministry of National Security, reported by RT.
Since then, the alleged spy has traveled to China several times at the direction of British intelligence to collect state secrets and identify MI6 personnel to “incite rebellion.” The Ministry of National Security added that London also provided Huang with intelligence training in the UK and elsewhere, and provided him with special spy equipment.
The Ministry of National Security stated that it had “found criminal evidence” against the suspect and taken “criminal coercive measures,” adding that Huang provided Britain with more than dozens of state secret data.
Although Western countries and China routinely trade accusations of espionage, some media outlets stated that this was the first time Beijing had claimed to have arrested a spy with ties to Britain.
However, the ministry previously claimed to have caught a spy acting on behalf of the US. In August, on two separate occasions, they accused a government employee and an employee of a Chinese military industrial group of attempting to hand over sensitive data to the CIA.
This comes after CIA Director William Burns said in July that the US had “made progress” in recent years to ensure it had “robust human intelligence capabilities” on China. In response, Beijing vowed to “take all necessary measures to safeguard national security.”
According to a 2017 New York Times investigation, the Chinese government dismantled the CIA spy network in the early 2010s, imprisoning or killing dozens of informants working for the US. Beijing did not confirm or deny the report, but said it routinely deals with activities that endanger national security.
Britain’s MI5 intelligence agency warned in October of the “massive scale” of Chinese espionage, saying that more than 20,000 people in Britain had been approached by agents seeking to obtain secrets. China has consistently denied that it engages in spying against the US and UK.
(ahm)
2024-01-08 15:50:09
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