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A former senior Federal Reserve official was arrested on Friday after US prosecutors accused him of passing on economic secrets to China.
John Harold Rogers, a senior adviser in the division of international finance at the Fed from 2010-21, used his position to access sensitive data on tariffs targeting China, briefings to senior officials, and policy deliberations and announcements, according to an indictment unsealed in federal US court in Washington, DC on Friday.
Rogers, a 63-year old Virginia resident, was accused of transferring sensitive information to his personal email account before printing it out and passing it on to Chinese officials disguised as graduate students.
“Under the guise of teaching ‘classes’, Rogers met with his co-conspirators in hotel rooms in China where he conveyed sensitive, trade secret information that belonged to the [Federal Reserve Board] and the [Federal Open Market Committee],” the Department of Justice said as it announced the charges, adding that the economist was paid about $450,000 as a part-time professor at a Chinese university.
Rogers’s attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Chinese government is one of the biggest global holders of US Treasuries, which the Fed bought in substantial quantities under several quantitative easing packages, which ran from after the global financial crisis of 2008 until during the coronavirus pandemic.
Fed interest rate decisions and signals on future monetary policy movements can also influence US Treasuries and are among the most closely watched reports across global financial markets.
US Treasury figures show that, as of November, China officially held $768.6bn-worth of the debt, making it the second-largest foreign holder after Japan.
The indictment alleges that the sensitive information was shared from “at least 2018” with alleged Chinese co-conspirators “who worked for the intelligence and security apparatus of China and who posed as graduate students at a [Chinese] university”.
A spokesperson for the Fed declined to comment.
This is a developing story
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