US indicts 10 Chinese over scheme to steal aerospace tech

WASHINGTON: The United States indicted 10 Chinese, including two intelligence officers, over a five-year scheme to steal technology from US and French aerospace firms by hacking into their computers.

The indictments came 20 days after the Department of Justice obtained the unprecedented extradition of a senior Chinese intelligence official from Belgium to stand trial in the United States for running the alleged state-sponsored effort to steal US aviation industry secrets. The Justice Department said the Chinese Ministry of State Security, through its Jiangsu province unit, engineered the effort to steal the technology underlying a turbofan engine used in US and European commercial airliners.

The engine was being developed through a partnership between a French aerospace manufacturer with an office in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, and a US firm, it said.

The companies were not named, but earlier indictments pointed to Cincinnati, Ohio-based GE Aviation, one of the world’s leading aircraft engine manufacturers.

Meanwhile France’s Safran Group, which was working with GE Aviation on engine development, has an office in Suzhou.

The operation first became public in September when the US indicted a Chinese-American engineer for helping steal files at the direction of a top official of the Jiangsu State Security bureau. Then on Oct 10 the Justice Department announced it had obtained the extradition of Xu Yanjun, the deputy division director of the Jiangsu bureau, from Belgium where he had apparently been lured and arrested in a counterintelligence operation. — AFP