China alleges fraud against spy defector to Australia

Shanghai police have accused Wang Liqiang, the man seeking asylum in Australia who claims to have played a part in Chinese intelligence operations in Hong Kong, of being a convicted fraudster.

But Mr Wang on Sunday stood by his allegations and denied the claims of the Chinese government. He said he had expected to be attacked and discredited, but that he'd given a sworn statement to the Australian government and stood by it, knowing the consequences of making a false statement would be serious.

Wang Liqiang in Sydney.Credit: Steven Siewert

A statement released by the Jingan branch of the Shanghai police on Saturday referred to a report in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald claiming Mr Wang had confessed to espionage in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but had defected to Australia seeking political asylum.

The police statement said the Jingan branch had checked the case of "so-called China spy Wang Liqiang". Mr Wang, a 26 year old male from Guangze in Fujian province, had fled a fraud investigation, the police statement said.

In October 2016 Mr Wang was first found guilty of fraud in Guangze People's Court in Fujian, and received a suspended sentence of one year and six months. Online court documents of the case appear to confirm the sentence, and state that Mr Wang had used "fictional facts and concealing the truth for the purpose of defrauding".

The statement said Mr Wang had defrauded a father of two children of 155,000 renminbi after offering to get the children into school.

He was given a suspended sentence because it was his first offence, and was a university student studying culture at the time, who had repaid the money he swindled and turned himself in to the police.

The Shanghai police statement said Mr Wang had left China for Hong Kong on April 10, and that a new investigation had been opened into him on April 19 this year. He is accused of fabricating a car import business and defrauding a person.

The statement said he was wanted for a 4.6 million renminbi ($960,000) fraud. The police continued to investigate the case, the statement said.

"When going through inspection he held a supposed People's Republic of China passport and Hong Kong identification that were fake," the statement said.

A BBC journalist in Washington, DC, Zhaoyin Feng, also found court records of other alleged cases of loan and property disputes involving Mr Wang between 2015 and 2019.

Liberal MP Andrew Hastie has praised Mr Wang's courage and called for the government to protect him.

Mr Hastie, who chairs Federal Parliament’s Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, said Mr Wang was a “friend of democracy” for exposing the Chinese government’s systematic and sweeping foreign interference operations.