Case of the odd break-ins stumps cops
The curious case of the burgled professor is no closer to being resolved, as a yearlong police investigation ended with an inconclusive result.
Canterbury University professor Anne-Marie Brady suffered a number of suspicious burglaries in early 2018 that she — and other scholars and intelligence analysts — have said were likely a response to her critical work investigating China’s foreign influence activities.
The investigation, which stretched for almost a year, involved the police’s secretive National Security Investigation Team, international law-enforcement body Interpol and spy agency the New Zealand Security and Intelligence Service. The latter agency also swept Brady’s home and university office for bugs.
In a statement yesterday police said they had been unable to resolve the case.
“Police have taken these incidents very seriously and [an] extensive investigation has been conducted.
“The burglaries and other matters reported remain unresolved at this time. The investigation is now at a point where there are no further lines of inquiry to pursue unless new information becomes available.”
Brady told the Herald she had been informed of the investigation’s conclusion on Monday.
“I am disappointed that despite the hard work of individual officers the police have not identified the culprit,” she said.
Brady, an internationally respected academic, emerged as a public figure in late 2017 after publishing her Magic Weapons paper using New Zealand as a case study in mapping out China’s international influence campaigns.
Brady’s work focused on political donations, board appointments for ex-politicians and their families, and links between these and China’s external influence agency the United Front Works Department. Following publication Brady has travelled to brief officials in Ottawa, Washington, London, Canberra and elsewhere.
The burglary of her home on February 14 saw devices — laptops and a burner phone — used to research the paper taken, but other valuables — including jewellery and cash left in the open — ignored. The following day, her office was also broken into.
In November her mechanic, unaware of the probe into the case, reported he believed her family’s car had been “tampered with” after finding both front tyres had dangerously low pressure. Police folded this claim into their investigation.
Early on, Brady had classed the burglaries as harassment in response to her work on China. Days after the burglaries she told an Australian parliamentary committee her earlier research on Antarctic politics had seen pressure put on her employer, and more recently associates in China had been questioned by Ministry of State Security officials.
The latest development comes as relations between China and developed nations, particularly the United States, have become increasingly tense as disputes over trade, claimed security risks with telecommunications firm Huawei, and China’s apparent retaliatory detention of foreign nationals are boiling over.