Asylum seeker is fugitive

CHINESE police said on Saturday a man identified in foreign media as a Chinese spy who defected to Australia was an “unemployed” fraud fugitive.

According to the story run by the Sidney Morning Herald, a former Chinese spy called Wang Liqiang has defected to Australia and confessed that he worked as a spy for the Communist Party of China in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Wang allegedly possessed a passport of the People’s Republic of China, a passport of South Korea and a Hong Kong permanent identity card, and used the papers to carry out his spying missions, according to Shanghai police.

The story published on the website of the Australian media had photos of the alleged originals of Wang’s Chinese and South Korean passports, but no photo of his Hong Kong ID card.

Shanghai police said that Wang is a 26-year-old man from Nanping City in Fujian Province who has no job and who has been under investigation for fraud by police in Shanghai’s Jing’an District, since April 19 this year.

Wang was suspected to have defrauded a person named Shu of over 4.6 million yuan (US$650,000) with a fabricated investment plan for imported automobiles in February this year.

He left for Hong Kong on April 10, and both his Chinese passport and Hong Kong ID card are forged, police claimed.

Wang was previously sentenced to one year and three months in prison with probation of one year and six months by the People’s Court of Guangze county in Fujian for fraud in October 2016.