Billionaire Chinese ‘spy’ prohibited from returning to Australia

ban equipment from the Chinese companies Hauwei and ZTE in the building of its 5G mobile telephone network.

The Home Affairs Department is understood to have denied Huang citizenship and a passport for several reasons, including concerns about the reliability of his answers to its spy agency.

Huang was a prolific political donor, fundraiser and networker and funded the Australia-china Relations Institute, an influential Sydney think tank headed by Bob Carr, a former Labor foreign minister.

As president of the Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China, Huang had access to top politicians from both sides. He is thought to have donated at least $2.8 million to parties. He allegedly had direct access to advisers or fundraisers for Tony Abbott, the former conservative prime minister. The Council was later linked to the United Front Work Department, a Communist Party agency tasked with influence and lobbying outside China.

When Andrew Robb, the former trade minister, was negotiating a China-australia deal, Huang donated dollars A$100,000 to his electoral fund, met him several times and is said to have informally offered advice.

In late 2017 he was at the centre of a political influence scandal that ended the career of Sam Dastyari, one of the Labor Party’s rising stars. Huang invited the senator to a Chinese-language press conference in Sydney at which Dastyari contradicted his party’s opposition to Beijing’s expansionism in the South China Sea. That, and the revelation that he had tipped off Huang that his phone was being tapped by Australia’s spies, ended Dastyari’s political career.

Huang left school at 15 to fend for his impoverished family after the death of his father. He started a property company, building villas and apartments Shenzhen, southern China.

In 2015 and 2016 Australia’s domestic spy agency privately warned both leading political parties that Huang’s donations might be entwined with his ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

A spokeman for Huang declined to comment. The billionaire is thought to be in Hong Kong. – The Times in