The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced charges on July 8 against a Chinese national taken into custody in Italy at the behest of Washington, and accused him of hacking into several U.S. universities to steal COVID-19 research at the direction of China’s main intelligence agency.
Xu Zewei, 33, was arrested in Milan, Italy, on July 3 by Italian law enforcement officials and FBI agents as he departed a plane from China.
Xu and another Chinese national, Zhang Yu, 44, who remains at large, are charged in a nine-count indictment unsealed in the Southern District of Texas on Tuesday for their alleged involvement in computer intrusions between February 2020 and June 2021.
According to the indictment, Xu was a general manager at a Chinese company called Shanghai Powerock Network, which allegedly conducted hacking operations at the direction of the Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB) under China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS).
The DOJ said that Xu’s case exemplifies the Chinese regime’s use of a vast network of private companies and contractors in China to carry out hacking and information theft in a manner that concealed Beijing’s involvement.
“The indictment alleges that Xu was hacking and stealing crucial COVID-19 research at the behest of the Chinese government while that same government was simultaneously withholding information about the virus and its origins,” Nicholas Ganjei, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas, said in a statement. “The Southern District of Texas has been waiting years to bring Xu to justice and that day is nearly at hand. As this case shows, even if it takes years, we will track hackers down and make them answer for their crimes. The United States does not forget.”
The CIA, FBI, and Energy Department have determined that the COVID-19 pandemic likely originated from a laboratory in China, an assessment that Beijing has dismissed. Chinese authorities initially downplayed the severity of the outbreak for several weeks before it escalated into a pandemic.
The FBI’s Houston Field Office, which is investigating the case, said that Xu is allegedly “one of the first hackers linked to Chinese intelligence services to be captured by the FBI,” according to a post on social media platform X on July 8.
“Our investigation revealed that the PRC government will stop at nothing to steal from America. They have no shame in their actions, and no respect for international laws,” the Houston Field Office added in a separate X post. “Their only regret is that their criminal conduct is now unmasked and laid bare for the world to see.”
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