NEW YORK — A real estate businessman who aided a Chinese effort to pressure an expatriate to return home has been sentenced to over a year in a U.S. prison.
U.S. prosecutors say Quanzhong An’s activities were part of the Chinese government’s “Operation Fox Hunt,” which Beijing says is about pursuing people who have fled justice. Washington sees it as transnational repression, a term for governments working to silence dissenters beyond their borders.
“Quanzhong An acted at the direction of the (Chinese) government to harass and intimidate individuals living on U.S. soil as part of a pernicious scheme to force their repatriation,” Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney John Durham said in a statement Wednesday.
Messages seeking comment were sent Thursday to China’s embassy in Washington and consulate in New York. China has previously denied threatening its nationals abroad.
An, a 58-year-old Chinese citizen and legal U.S. resident, pleaded guilty last year to acting as an illegal foreign agent. He was sentenced to 20 months behind bars. He has served seven of them already.
“Mr. An is in my opinion, on balance, a very fine man and accordingly, seeing him return to prison for even one additional day is heartbreaking,” his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said Thursday. But he noted that prosecutors had sought a considerably longer prison term.
According to prosecutors and an indictment, An was the key U.S.-based player in a transcontinental effort targeting a former manager of a Chinese state-owned company. Prosecutors have not named the man or the company.
