Conviction in Australia for foreign interference
Vietnamese refugee guilty of covertly working for Chinese Communist Party
An Australian court yesterday recorded the first conviction under the nation’s foreign interference laws, with a jury finding a Vietnamese refugee guilty of covertly working for the Chinese Communist Party.
A Victoria state County Court jury convicted Melbourne businessman and local community leader Di Sanh Duong on a charge of preparing for or planning an act of foreign interference.
Duong, an ethnic Chinese from Vietnam who immigrated to Australia in the 1970s, is the first person to be charged under federal laws created in 2018 that ban covert foreign interference in domestic politics and make industrial espionage for a foreign power a crime.
The laws offended Australia’s most important trading partner, China, and accelerated a deterioration in bilateral relations.
Duong, 68, had pleaded not guilty. He was released on bail after his conviction and will return to court in February for his sentencing.
He faces a potential 10-year prison sentence.
Prosecutors had argued that Duong, a former member of the Liberal Party, planned to gain political influence in 2020 by cultivating a relationship with the then-government minister Alan Tudge on behalf of the Communist Party.
Duong did so by arranging for Tudge to receive A$37,450 (then equivalent to about HK$200,000) in a novelty cheque donation raised by community organisations for a Melbourne hospital.
Prosecutor Patrick Doyle told the jury the Communist Party would have seen Duong as an “ideal target” to work as its agent.
“A main goal of this system is to win over friends for the Chinese Communist Party. It involves generating sympathy for the party and its policies,” Doyle told the jury.
Doyle said Duong told an associate he was building a relationship with Tudge, who “will be the prime minister in the future” and would become a “supporter/patron for us”.