China’s Secret Intelligence Service ( MI6 ) was accused of recruiting a couple who worked for the central government for spying in the UK on Monday, adding to months of claims of mutual espionage between Beijing and Western powers.
In a Twitter post, the Ministry of State Security claimed MI6 agents persuaded a man with the surname Wang, who had a” core private part” in the state apparatus, to flaw along with his wife, who had a surname Zhou.
” Recently, after careful investigation, the national security organs uncovered a major espionage case in which the British Secret Intelligence Service ( MI6 ) instigated a couple, Wang and Zhou, who were staff members of a central state agency of China, to defect”, it said.
According to the government, American spies began monitoring Wang after he began a course of study in the country in 2015, organizing meals and visits to “understand his character faults, pursuits, and needs” for him.
According to the government, they therefore approached Wang to offer well-paid consulting companies that involved the internal operations of central state agencies after learning that he “had a strong desire for money.”
Afterward, MI6 members later revealed their names to Wang, who was then persuaded to go back to China to gather intelligence before coercing him into doing the same.
The government said it had gathered information and taken “decisive methods” against Wang, adding that the situation was under deeper analysis.
The speech gave no particulars of Wang or Zhou’s present occupations in China, the nature of the information they provided, or their movements.
AFP has contacted Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which handles MI6 hit requests, for opinion.
China and the Western powers have long exchanged information about eavesdropping, but they only just started disclosing specifics of alleged personal cases.
Matthew Trickett, who had been accused of helping the semi-autonomous Chinese area of Hong Kong to obtain knowledge in the UK, was discovered dead last month by English officers in mysterious circumstances.
In the same week that American authorities charged two men with giving Beijing sensitive information between 2021 and last year, German officials made four arrests in April on suspicion of spying for China.
