China-Based Executive at U.S. Telecommunications Company Charged with Disrupting Video Meetings Commemorating Tiananmen Square Massacre

This Office will continue working tirelessly to protect against threats to the free expression of political views and religious beliefs, regardless whether those threats come from inside or outside the United States.”Mr. DuCharme and Mr. Demers also extended their thanks and appreciation to Company-1 for its cooperation in the government’s ongoing investigation.According to the complaint, Jin served as Company-1’s primary liaison with PRC law enforcement and intelligence services. Jin was also responsible for proactively monitoring Company-1’s video communications platform for what the PRC government considers to be “illegal” meetings to discuss political and religious subjects unacceptable to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the PRC government.As alleged in the complaint, between January 2019 to the present, Jin and others conspired to use Company-1’s systems in the United States to censor the political and religious speech of individuals located in the United States and around the world at the direction and under the control of officials of the PRC government. Jin, officials from the PRC government and others allegedly collaborated to identify meeting participants and to disrupt meetings hosted on Company-1’s U.S. servers, at times creating pretextual reasons to justify their actions to other employees and executives of Company-1, as well as Company-1’s users themselves. Jin then tasked a high-ranking employee of Company-1 in the United States to effect the termination of meetings and the suspension and cancellation of user accounts.As detailed in the complaint, Jin’s co-conspirators created fake email accounts and Company-1 accounts in the names of others, including PRC political dissidents, to fabricate evidence that the hosts of and participants in the meetings to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre were supporting terrorist organizations, inciting violence or distributing child pornography.