NEW YORK: The leader of a US think tank has been charged with acting as an unregistered agent of China, as well as seeking to broker the sale of weapons and Iranian oil, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said on Monday (Jul 10).
Gal Luft, a citizen of the United States and Israel, is accused of recruiting and paying a former high-ranking US government official on behalf of principals based in China in 2016, without registering as a foreign agent as required by law.
Prosecutors did not identify the former official, but said he was working as an adviser to the then president-elect Donald Trump at the time. Luft is accused of pushing the adviser to support policies favourable to China, including by drafting comments in the adviser’s name published in a Chinese newspaper.
A Twitter account bearing Luft’s name, with more than 15,000 followers, said in a Feb 18 tweet that he had been arrested in Cyprus “on a politically motivated extradition request by the US”.
“I’ve never been an arms dealer,” Luft said in the tweet. He did not immediately respond to a direct message sent by Reuters seeking comment.
Source: CNA
