MELBOURNE, Australia: A jury in a Sydney court found a businessman from the city guilty of providing reports to two people he should have suspected were Chinese spies.
Alexander Csergo, 59, is only the second person to be convicted under Australian laws against covert interference and espionage that angered China when they were legislated in 2018.
The jury in the New South Wales District Court in Sydney said on March 13 that Csergo should have suspected that a man and woman he knew only as Ken and Evelyn were working for China's Ministry of State Security.
He was found guilty of reckless foreign interference. The court released him on bail for the weekend, and he must return on March 16. Prosecutors will then argue that he should be kept in custody. He could face up to 15 years in prison at sentencing.
Csergo's lawyers said he was only using publicly available information for research. They also said he lied to the suspected spies about interviewing several people, including former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who is now Australia's ambassador to the United States.
Csergo was working in Shanghai in 2021 as a communications and technology consultant when someone named Evelyn contacted him on LinkedIn. She said she worked for a Chinese think tank.
He later gave handwritten reports to Evelyn and another person named Ken and received cash in return. The reports covered topics such as defense, security, politics, and mining. One topic was AUKUS, the partnership in which Britain will help Australia build submarines powered by U.S. nuclear technology.
