US charges former Fed official with spying for China

The American and Chinese flags wave at Genting Snow Park ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics, in Zhangjiakou, China, on Feb. 2, 2022. A top White House official on Wednesday said at least eight U.S. telecom firms and dozens of nations have been impacted by a Chinese hacking campaign. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File)

WASHINGTON, United States — US prosecutors announced Friday that they had charged a former Federal Reserve advisor with economic espionage on behalf of China, accusing him of trying to steal trade secrets.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said it had charged John Harold Rogers, 63, with spying on behalf of Beijing while employed as a senior advisor at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (FRB).

The indictment, unsealed on Friday, said Rogers had leaked secret information from the Fed’s board and from its powerful rate-setting committee while he was working for the FRB’s Division of International Finance.

“The confidential information that Rogers allegedly shared with his Chinese co-conspirators, who worked for the intelligence and security apparatus of China and who posed as graduate students at a PRC university, is economically valuable when secret,” the DOJ said in a statement.

The DOJ said that, since 2018, Rogers had “allegedly exploited his employment with the FRB by soliciting trade-secret information regarding proprietary economic data sets,” including deliberations on tariffs against China.

“He passed that information electronically to his personal email account, in violation of FRB policy, or printed it prior to traveling to China, in preparation for meetings with his co-conspirators,” they added.

When in China, Rogers then shared the information during secret meetings held in hotel rooms, while he was pretending to teach classes at a local university.

He was paid approximately $450,000 for his part-time work at the Chinese university, the indictment alleges.

“On February 4, 2020, in response to questioning by the Office of the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve Board, Rogers lied about his accessing and passage of sensitive information and his associations with his co-conspirators,” the DOJ said.

The charges of conspiracy to commit economic espionage and making false statements carry maximum penalties of 15 years in prison and a $5 million fine, and 5 years in prison respectively, the DOJ said.